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OLD FAITHS 
AND NEW FACTS 



BY f 

WILLIAM W. KINSLEY 

AUTHOR OF VIEWS ON VEXED QUESTIONS 





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NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1896 



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Copyright, 1895, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



PEEFACE. 



The first two subdivisions of my theme appeared 
not long ago as separate series of articles in the pages 
of the Bibliotheca Sacra. That on Prayer had the 
good fortune to attract the attention of Bishop J. H. 
Vincent, who was so favorably impressed with it that 
he suggested that it be submitted to the Board of 
Councilors of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific 
Circles, of which he has long served as Chancellor, 
with a view to the incorporation of the paper into the 
prescribed course of reading. This was done, and 
the series, meeting with acceptance, was published in 
book form, and became a part of the literature of the 
circles for 1894, reaching thereby a very large and 
widely distributed class of most eager inquirers. 

This fact has encouraged the present grouping; 
and if those into whose hands this little volume may 
chance to fall shall derive from it one tithe of the 
spiritual reassurance and uplifting its preparation has 
afforded me I will feel most amply repaid. 

Washington, D. C, "William W. Kinsley. 

October 8, 1895. 

iii 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introduction 1 

Science and prayer 13 

Science and Christ 113 

Science and the life beyond 211 

v 



OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 



INTKODUCTIOK 

There are three most vital questions that in every 
age press upon human thought for settlement : Does 
prayer avail ? Was Christ Divine ? Is man immor- 
tal ? The eager, fearless spirit of scientific investiga- 
tion abroad to-day has unearthed such a vast multitude 
of facts in every conceivable department of inquiry 
and such interlacing systems of law, that thinkers in 
their attempted solution of these questions encounter 
new and most formidable difficulties and also most 
unexpected and valuable helps. The modes of solu- 
tion that satisfied former centuries prove wholly in- 
adequate to meet the demands of these modern times. 
There is not now that overmastering awe and rever- 
ence that once quite effectually barred out investiga- 
tion. There is no longer that childlike, unquestion- 
ing acceptance of the dictum of others, however 
learned or holy, or hedged about with ecclesiastical 
prestige and power. The sacred Scriptures them- 
selves have not escaped the searching criticisms that 
now everywhere prevail, even in the schools of the 
prophets. 



2 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

There are still, it is true, great numbers who are 
so intently busy with affairs, or so averse to or un- 
trained in consecutive thinking, or are so purblind 
through superstitions that are born of ignorance, that 
they feel no incitement to independent inquiry on 
these themes, resting content either with no opinion 
or with simply an adopted one, accepting whatever con- 
clusions they are told are biblical or orthodox. This 
mass of minds, not yet having felt the stir of modern 
thought or been disturbed by modern doubt, naturally 
feel little interest in the resettlement of these questions, 
although they are fraught with such momentous issues. 
There is, however, a public, rapidly enlarging, 
made up of vigorous, progressive inquirers, eager after 
truth and willing to follow it wherever it may lead, 
to which the old proofs appear wholly inadequate, and 
consequently the old beliefs to be shrouded in the 
gravest doubt. It is not enough for them to be shown 
merely what the Scriptures teach and the canons of 
the Church authoritatively affirm. They call for facts 
facts incontrovertibly established with scientific ac- 
curacy, with cool judicial precision, in the various de- 
partments of physics and metaphysics, biology and 
psychology, history and biography, of the many dif- 
ferent branches of modern research. They call for 
an orderly, logical grouping and interpretation of those 
facts and a clear demonstration of the underlying 
principles and laws that witness to the active presence 
of an organizing, overruling mind. It is to such in- 
quirers that these pages are addressed, and it is there- 
fore from their standpoint that I aim to carry on the 
present discussions. 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

In resettling for my own personal needs these very 
questions, I have had to -re-examine the lowest foun- 
dations of all theistic faith, to determine in my own 
mind whether there is an actual personality behind all 
phenomena from which they directly or indirectly 
proceed ; whether the universe evinces strict unity of 
design and witnesses to the thought-life of not only 
an ever-living but an ever-active Designer, or whether 
matter, having neither beginning nor end, does not 
v really contain within itself " the promise and potency 
of all life." As I have attempted to settle this, the 
most fundamental of all beliefs, in my little volume, 
Yiews on Vexed Questions, in the divisions entitled 
The Supernatural, and Mental Life below the Human, 
I will in the present discussion assume as settled the 
truth of theism and will proceed on that basis. Yet 
the soundness of the current conceptions of the attri- 
butes of this personal God and of his modes of think- 
ing and working I have ventured to place in issue, 
such as his being unconditioned, omnipotent, omnis- 
cient, and omnipresent. 

Inasmuch as the general question of the nature 
and extent of the Divine presence has not been so 
fully or directly treated as the others, perhaps a few 
words of explanation will be of interest, especially as 
that portion of it which concerns G-od's sympathetic 
relations with his children is closely interwoven with 
my after-argument. 

The mystery of the Divine presence is considered 
by most as too deep and too sacred for human fath- 
oming, and, in consequence of this hasty dismissal 
of the subject there widely prevails, even in Chris- 



4 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

tian circles, ill-defined conceptions merging into 
unconscious pseudo-pantheism. Of course, we can 
not hope with our finite powers to compass the in- 
finite, but if we would have God become to us a 
definite personality, a being whom we can love and 
to whom we can pray, we must form for oursleves a 
conception of him having somewhat at least of defi- 
nite and appreciable outline, however inadequate 
that outline may actually be to the Great Original. 
If we are led to regard God simply as an immensity- 
filling force, as an unknowable and unthinkable intel- 
ligence, we have absolutely nothing left us to which 
either love or faith or hope can cling. So impera- 
tively necessary to any spiritual life in those of reflec- 
tive habits are clear notions on this subject, that every 
effort should be made to dissipate as far as possible 
the many mist banks that have settled upon this por- 
tion of the world's mental landscape. 

The question naturally arises, In what sense is God 
everywhere present ? Is he distributed like an atmos- 
phere, permeating every substance through and 
through, equally present and present in the same 
sense in every corner of his dominions at the same 
instant and continuously ? Does he fill ajl space, 
reaching out on every side infinitely, having no limit, 
no form, no separate abiding place, no existence apart 
from the universe he has made, but indiscriminately 
and inseparably commingled with it, so that all matter 
and force are nothing more than phases of the Divine 
presence, everything being God and God everything ? 
This is the road that leads at last to pantheism, and 
too many of us have been unconsciously beguiled 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

thitherward until we have become bewildered and 
well-nigh lost to clear thought. 

Can we believe in God's omnipresence and still 
avoid this mental fog-land ? It will be impossible 
for us to free the subject entirely of difficulties, for 
the nature of our own personal presence is still, to 
a considerable extent, shrouded in mystery. Of the 
essential nature of the forces we know nothing. They 
are not only wholly impalpable to us, but wholly in- 
conceivable. We believe the forces to be entities in 
themselves, dwelling in matter and presiding over it, 
but not constituting any part of it. Whether they 
have dimensions, and if so whether those dimensions 
are coextensive with the forms of the matter they 
inhabit, are subjects about which it is idle to conjec- 
ture. We only know of their presence by their effects 
on matter, and so we have been compelled to ac- 
cept the conclusion that their presence is coextensive 
with their influence. The organic forces which have 
built up our bodies and are now lodged within them 
are supposed to be present in those bodies wherever 
their vitalizing influence is felt and no further. Our 
spirits — which, if we can credit the testimony of self- 
consciousness, are forces separate from the organic 
and superior to them, yet lodged within the same 
tenements — are understood to extend their personal 
presence through the organisms just so far and just so 
long as they exercise direct personal control. The 
opinion that the soul is seated somewhere in the brain 
generally prevails simply because that organ is the 
scene of the soul's greatest and most constant activity, 
the place where its influence is fullest felt. Personal 



6 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

presence, if closely analyzed, will be found to be made 
up of three distinctive elements — knowledge, sym- 
pathy, and will. 

The soul can reach out farther than the confines 
of the body in all these three directions, and the 
circle of this outreaching may be properly regarded 
as the circle of its personal presence. "We thus come 
into each other's presence when we approach near 
enough to be able to uncurtain our inner selves 
through the eye, and ear, and lip, and lifted hand, 
when our faces shine out in frank avowal, and our 
voices are intoned with the thought and feeling our 
hearts teach the tongue to express. The more numer- 
ous and the more widely opened the avenues of com- 
munication become, the more pronounced and imme- 
diate becomes the personal presence. We have given 
us other avenues than the bodily senses. There is a 
subtle and secret spiritual influence that exhales from 
every soul, an unconscious self -revealing power, and 
power of making one's presence felt. What the ra- 
dius of that influence is, or its nature, none know. 
The fact of its real existence, however, has long since 
ceased to be a matter of doubt. 

This unconscious spiritual influence is supple- 
mented by a conscious, deliberative outreaching of the 
soul's sympathy and by direct acts of volition. .So 
far away, then, as our souls can uncurtain themselves 
to others and can make their power of sympathy and 
of will felt by direct spiritual impressment, so far 
sweeps the circle of our personal presence. Now, if 
our bodily senses were such that we could see each 
other and hear each other speak across a continent 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

or around a world as readily as we now do across a 
room, and our unconscious and conscious spiritual 
influence and our sympathetic and volitional power 
could extend so far, we might properly assert that 
our personal presence was equally trans-continental 
or world-embracing. Eight here, it seems to me, we 
have suggested an explanation of God's omnipresence, 
which is wholly relieved from that pantheistic vague- 
ness which so tends to weaken Christian faith, and 
presents for our thought and worship a Being with 
as sharply defined a personality as our own, possess- 
ing precisely analogous characteristics simply mag- 
nified and perfected. Even had it not been revealed 
to us that we are created in God's image, we would be 
warranted by the principles of sound philosophy in 
basing our conceptions of him upon those we enter- 
tain of ourselves, to think of him as one the counter- 
part of whose attributes may be found in our own. 
If he has any other, we can not know it or have any 
basis upon which to form the least conception of it. 

Suppose, then, God to be a spirit as distinctly dif- 
ferent and apart from his universe as are our spirits 
from these garments of flesh that now enwrap them ; 
suppose he can see every object and watch every phe- 
nomenon in every part of his wide domain as readily 
and as perfectly as we can the things and the happen- 
ings in any single room in which we may chance to 
be, his organs of vision being not only telescopic but 
microscopic, and possessed, moreover, of what we un- 
derstand by clairvoyance, a power to see through the 
densest substances, so that the most distant, the most 
minute, and the most opaque lie within easy and per- 



8 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

feet visual grasp ; suppose his means of acquaintance 
with such other qualities of his material universe as 
are revealed to us in part through our different or- 
gans of sense are also equally comprehensive and 
exact; suppose he is so perfectly conversant with 
the nature of all the delegated forces and the condi- 
tions that unfetter them, that he can release or en- 
chain them at his pleasure; suppose that his will 
can operate as directly and as effectively every- 
where over both dead matter and living force as our 
wills do to the utmost confines of these incasing 
bodies of ours, his will working in precisely the same 
way, only with a wider sweep and a~ more command- 
ing power ; suppose he is placed so en rapport with 
every thinking being that he not only knows what is 
passing in the most secret seK-communings of every 
mind, but can opportunely introduce his own thought 
and leave it to the laws of association and suggestion 
to work its transformations ; suppose he can entertain 
at the same instant an unlimited number of ideas 
without experiencing any more embarrassment or 
even as much as we when we entertain the few 
possible to our capacity, so that he can take ready 
cognizance of everything occurring, and divide his 
attention among as many changes as there are 
changes momentarily effected throughout habitable 
space 5 ; suppose, in other words, all the secrets of the 
universe lie open before him, and all the forces are 
made servitors directly or indirectly of his sovereign 
w iH_then we may affirm of him not only omnipotence 
and omniscience, but also omnipresence as a natural 
and necessary result of these two, and yet predicate 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

of liim no means of knowledge, or resource of power, 
or phase of personal presence we ourselves do not 
possess in a limited finite form, lie differing from us 
in not a single attribute, but simply in the perfectness 
and in the unlimited comprehensiveness of every one. 
This viewing of God as a spirit in whose image we 
ourselves were fashioned at the first and whose wish 
and purpose it is that under laws and processes of 
evolution established by himself these implanted germs 
of Divine likeness shall unfold through the ages into 
more perfect and pronounced resemblance; this re- 
garding of his personal presence as, in every essential 
resembling our own, and differing only in sweeping 
through a wider circuit because based on a wider 
knowledge, a deeper sympathy, and a more imperial 
will, while in no way belittling our conception of him, 
clears it happily of much of that pseudo-pantheistic 
mistiness and impersonality that make him seem to 
us so unreal and so almost hopelessly remote. 

However gratifying and sustaining it may be thus 
to be able to thoroughly convince ourselves of God's 
continual and active presence in this world of ours and 
to bring within our finite comprehension how he can 
thus be present and present everywhere and during 
every moment and yet possess as distinct a personality 
as our own, our hearts are still left craving. We feel 
that we can not rest until we settle the further ques- 
tion whether it is presumptuous to believe that it is 
the privilege of every one of us to come into his sym- 
pathetic presence and to abide there. That it is not 
presumptuous, but rather the most natural and reason- 
able attitude of every longing soul, that God is not 



10 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

only intimately acquainted with, but deeply interested 
in, the most obscure and least gifted among us, I have 
happily found proofs, which to me are most convinc- 
ing, in facts revealed by the recent researches of 
science. To some of these I take pleasure in inviting 
attention. 

If, during these discussions of life's three greatest 
problems, I reach conclusions controverting those en- 
tertained by any of my readers, all I ask is that, hold- 
ing in abeyance preconceived opinions, as I have en- 
deavored to do in my own case, they inquire simply 
whether the facts cited have been satisfactorily estab- 
lished, and the conclusions based upon them have 
been logically reached. 



SCIENCE AND PEAYEE. 



11 



SCIENCE AND PEAYER. 

I 

The Scriptures affirm that, in answer to prayer, a 
part of Palestine was once visited with long drought 
and afterward with copious rains and harvests, an en- 
tire family healed, a raging fire quenched, God's pur- 
pose to destroy a stiff-necked people changed, the sun 
and moon apparently stopped in mid-heaven for an 
entire day, a thunderstorm made to burst right in 
wheat harvest, a leprous hand cured, a dead child re- 
vived, a good king's life lengthened, and, for an assur- 
ing token, a dial's shadow actually turned backward. 

The Bible unmistakably teaches that Grod both 
can and does interfere in our behalf, that his inter- 
ference often is a direct result of our asking, that all 
reasonable prayers offered in a right spirit are certain 
of favorable answer. The requests may be as varied 
as the healthful and intelligent longings of human 
hearts. 

Some scientists smile at what they style the childish 
credulity of the Christian's creed. Our investigations, 
say they, have disclosed a universal reign of un- 
changeable law, not only in the production of material 
but even of mental phenomena. We have found 



13 



14 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

that within the walls of every particle of matter there 
is lodged a force ; that these forces are of sixty-four 
or more different kinds, and their differences in nature 
and effect make all the differences in the substances 
about us; that they bear to each other certain un- 
alterably fixed relations, and exert over each other 
unalterably fixed influences. These relations we have 
been able by our experiments to reduce to mathe- 
matical formula. We have found that these forces 
never manifest themselves unless certain conditions 
are fulfilled, and that, when they are, the forces in- 
variably appear and act always in precisely the same 
way. It is also claimed, that as far back as we can 
peer into the past, this same order has prevailed ; that 
this rock-ribbed, wave-washed, verdure-clad, densely 
populated earth of ours has come up out of chaotic 
fire mist by the operations of none other than these 
very forces which at the first were hidden within it ; 
that the earth has developed from its unorganized 
primordial state into its present complexity with as 
regular gradations of growth as those through which 
the oak passes in pushing up from out the walls of 
the acorn its sinewy stem with outreaching boughs 
and waving pennons ; that the earth itself is an or- 
ganism as truly as the tree, has like complemental 
parts, has had a germinal beginning, has been, and 
still is, incarnating under pre-established laws of evo- 
lution, point by point, age after age, a certain set 
ideal under the guidance of a central germ power, 
divinely commissioned it may be, but commissioned 
even as to the details of its finest microscopic work, 
untold millions of years ago. 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 15 

How idle, then, it is, they claim, for weak, blind 
children of a day to presume to break in on this grand 
order of the universe ! Go out into Nature, they tell 
us, and you will find that not a single one of her laws 
is ever abrogated, that from their control not the 
least thing is for an instant released. Gravity holds 
in its grasp not only the ponderous suns with their 
whirling satellites, but every infinitesimal mote that 
floats in the air. The force shut up within the walls 
of an atom of carbon is never dislodged, and never 
loses a single characteristic. Manacle it with fetters 
of frost, immerse it in the white heat of a furnace, 
smite it with a trip hammer on the face of an anvil, 
hurl it into the chemical embrace of an affinitive 
element, do what you will with it, it will reappear 
identically the same atom informed by precisely the 
same mysterious force. -This speck of matter defies 
all powers of earth or sky to batter in its walls and 
drive out its occupant. Every force, the world over, 
says that only those who find its secret and meet the 
conditions can command its services. Do you want 
bread ? Here is the seed, the soil, the air, the shower, 
and the sunbeam. Matter and force are at your bid- 
ding, but their laws are inexorable. Eays of light 
will travel ninety-five millions of miles to serve you ; 
the atmosphere will gather its clouds from the ocean 
and float them across a continent to pour their treas- 
ures at your feet; the mountains will furnish you 
with millstones, and the running brooks will turn 
them. The forests that grew a hundred thousand 
years ago you may find packed away in beds of 
anthracite, waiting to heat your ovens so soon as your 



16 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

dough is ready for the baking. Not a force in Nature 
but will serve the veriest outcast if he will comply 
with the conditions ; not one, even the humblest, will 
condescend to move so much as a hair's breadth even 
for the Czar of all the Russias, unless he does. The 
prayerless sinner and the praying saint meet here on 
a common level. All those stories about producing 
thunderstorms by prayer, healing the sick, turning 
back shadows, stopping the sun in the heavens, raising 
the dead, are thoroughly unscientific and absurd, and 
the height of absurdity is reached when it is claimed 
that the all-wise Creator can be induced to change his 
plans by the importunate pleadings of a little creature 
to whom he has given a brief existence on one of the 
obscure satellites of one of the million suns that make 
up one of the nebulous clusters with which the 
heavens are swarming. What greater presumption 
can be imagined ? Has the Almighty so sadly blun- 
dered in his plans that this little creature can discover 
to him their defects, and induce him to make a change 
at this late day, when everything is so intimately in- 
terlinked and interdependent that an interference in 
one part may demand a reconstruction throughout 
the whole in order to avoid widespread confusion and 
ruin ? Can Grod spare any special thought now for 
such infinitesimal interests so long as the concerns of 
this vast swinging universe are upon him ? He has 
laid down broad general plans. We can not reasona- 
bly expect him to listen to our baby prattle about the 
petty details of our vanishing lives. If we thrust our 
hands into the fire, live in a malarious district, are 
capsized in mid-ocean, we must suffer the natural con- 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 17 

sequences, and look about us, as best we can, for a 
more congenial environment.. 

Such, in brief, is the attitude assumed at the pres- 
ent day by a majority of scientists on this one of the 
most vital and perplexing of questions. This their 
creed is, as I think can be clearly shown, a most mis- 
chievous mixture of truth and error. The spirit of 
cold, speculative skepticism pervading it is making 
rapid inroads upon all classes in society. How many 
even of those who have been gathered into the fold of 
the Church have fallen under the blighting spell of 
this genius of modern materialistic thought ! How 
many prayers are simply the outbreathings of a rev- 
erential fear, or are a mere dead formalism, or the re- 
sults of sheer habit ! How many are little else than 
agonized longings accompanied with no joyous expec- 
tation! How few, very few, are offered with the 
same confident assurance of results as inspires the 
farmer when he sows his fields, or the telegraph op- 
erator when with his key he closes the electric circuit 
and sends his messages over the long leagues of ocean 
cable ! 

My purpose at present is to show — 

1. That the phenomena and the producing forces 
with their laws or modes of working brought to light 
by scientific investigations in the fields of physics and 
of metaphysics, harmonize perfectly with the Scrip- 
ture view of prayer, and abound in suggestions of how 
God can interfere in Nature without destroying any 
force or abrogating a single law. 

2. That, as a fact, he has thus actually interfered 
again and again. 



18 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

3. That it is not only not presumptuous, but most 
natural and reasonable, for us to expect that he will 
interfere for us, insignificant though we may seem 
to be. 

4. That he will interfere because we ask him, 
doing for us what otherwise he would not have done. 

5. And, lastly, that he will not in a single in- 
stance withhold any real blessing which is asked 
for in the right spirit, and the bestowal of which lies 
within the compass of his power. 

1. How can God answer prayer without destroy- 
ing any force or abrogating any law ? In my own 
experience, light on this point first came from the 
perusal of Dr. BushnelPs Nature and the Supernatu- 
ral. His mode of treatment has long since passed 
out of memory, but a thought-germ was lodged in my 
mind which has since grown into a deep-rooted con- 
viction. As, however, I have followed out these 
lines of thought, it has been a constant source of sur- 
prise that so many of the scientists, while they have 
with tireless patience and keenest insight unraveled 
much of the infinite intricacy that attends the inter- 
play of Nature's forces, unearthing so many secrets 
and becoming masters in so many fields of inquiry, 
have seemingly lost sight of that most interesting and 
important of all facts — that everywhere ample pro- 
vision has been made for the efficient interference of 
direct will power. They of course can not have 
failed to discover it, for there is hardly a waking mo- 
ment in the lives of any of us when we are not con- 
scious that we actually exercise volitions, and that 
these volitions effect changes, and sometimes most im- 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. jg 

portant ones, in the world about us. Plow our wills 
are thus linked witli matter it would probably puzzle 
the wisest to explain ; but that they actually are, is a 
fact patent to all. And so I surmise it is not the fact, 
but the deep significance of the fact, that has so 
strangely escaped the notice of so many of our savants 
of science. 

Over my body in many particulars my will exer- 
cises direct control. I, for instance, order my hand 
lifted. The mandate instantly flashes from the brain 
down the motor nerves to the very muscles in waiting, 
and their fibers at once begin to shorten. I exercise 
this direct will power right against the force of grav- 
ity, temporarily overpowering but not destroying it 
for it still continues to pull the hand down with the 
same might as before. This overbalancing of one 
force by another is taking place everywhere through- 
out Nature. For illustration, take a tumbler of water. 
If it were not for the cohesive attraction between the 
particles of the glass being stronger than the gravity, 
the sides would crumble into dust, and sink with the 
water to the lowest attainable level. Gravity has not 
been destroyed, but simply mastered by a stronger 
antagonist. Eemove a part of the heat from the 
water, and it will become a crystallized solid, showing 
that until now the heat force has been holding the crys- 
talline in check. Lower still further the temperature, 
and the sides of the tumbler will burst in pieces, the 
crystalline force overcoming the cohesive. Eaise the 
temperature, and the water will change to steam, and 
a repellence between the particles will appear, the heat 
driving them asunder, despite all that cohesion can do. 



20 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

Over the world outside the body, the control of 
our wills, though mostly indirect, is equally potent, 
and yet Nature is not thrown into confusion, not a 
single force destroyed, not a law abrogated. Our voli- 
tions are simply supernatural, not contranatural. Our 
wills act indirectly by complying with the conditions 
that unfetter Nature's forces. The scientists have es- 
tablished beyond question the fact that there is not a 
single one of these forces that is not wholly inopera- 
tive unless certain conditions are fulfilled, and just as 
soon as they are, the force begins to work its wonders. 
Scientists have even gone further, discovering in very 
many instances precisely what those conditions are, 
and thus placed it within our reach to utilize those 
forces in the arts of life. 

Back of our will power, acting as its guide, there 
now exists, thanks to these explorers, a well-informed 
intelligence, and we have become masters of Nature 
by simply understanding and complying with her laws. 
For instance, we want homes for ourselves and our 
little ones, and so we cast about and find abundance 
of crude material — sand and clay, metal and slate, rock 
and standing trees and running water. Our wills de- 
cree that these shall be transformed into cemented 
walls of brick and stone, framed timbers, tessellated 
floors, frescoed ceilings, plate-glass windows, roofs- and 
mantels, furnaces and swinging doors, and step by 
step, under the quickening power of the mind, the 
wondrous change is wrought. We even make our 
wills felt in the domains of vegetable and animal life, 
improving old varieties and developing new ones 
amono- fruits and flowers and domesticated animals, 

£3 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 21 

enriching and seeding onr soils, and multiplying our 
flocks and herds to meet our ever-growing wants. 

The processes by which our wills enforce their de- 
crees may be a little tedious, but the ends are reached, 
the course of Nature is seriously broken in upon, re- 
sults attained which otherwise Nature never would 
have attempted, yet no disorder has anywhere ensued. 
What marvelous effects have been produced by this 
intelligent will power of man, cunningly directing to 
its own uses the ever-waiting elemental and vital 
forces ! How many rivers have been bridged, beds of 
rivers shifted or tunneled, mountains discrowned or 
their rocky centers pierced to open highways for the 
world's commerce! The very lightnings have been 
tamed into flying Mercurys to carry the thought-mes- 
sages of this busy-brained master, the oceans whitened 
with his sails, the continents covered with his networks 
of railways and canals, barren wastes changed into 
vineyards and palm groves and orange orchards, the 
unshapely quarries of granite and of marble trans- 
formed into palaces and statue-crowned temples to 
body forth his ripest culture and most holy thought. 

The influence of the human will has had even a 
wider circuit assigned it. Many of us have known 
instances of weak wills being overawed by stronger 
ones, and the domination being so absolute as for the 
time being to actually blot out every distinctive trace 
of personality and suspend individual responsibility. 
Not one of us but has felt, time and again, the indi- 
rect power of another's will reaching us through chan- 
nels of argument, persuasive kindling of the fancy, 
eloquent appeal, shrewd suggestion, or show of appre- 



22 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

ciative sympathy. There are a thousand avenues to 
the heart, a thousand ways to arouse the conscience, 
inflame passion, fill the chambers of the soul with 
dread alarms, and these are discovered and utilized by 
positive and aggressive souls athirst for wealth, power, 
or prestige. Society has its born leaders. Individu- 
ality and responsible free choice are with the vast ma- 
jority still retained, but it is through these multiform 
influences of personal character that the life of the 
world's subtile social organism is, under pre-established 
spiritual laws, regulated and maintained. 

Thus we see that to the touch of the human will 
all Nature is plastic, that every facility has seemingly 
been provided for its efficient interference. Think 
you that, in a world where so many doors have been 
so invitingly left open for the will of the creature to 
enter and occupy, the will of the Creator has been 
studiously excluded ? Can science, which has so con- 
clusively proved the one, consistently deny the other ? 
Is it not rather forced to assert that, so far as G-od's 
will has greater innate power and is guided by a pro- 
founder knowledge, it has proportionately greater fa- 
cilities for effecting its purposes and, at the same time, 
leaving every force and law both in the material and 
mental kingdoms equally undisturbed ? 

Before the birth of science a radical misconception 
of the true nature of miracles was entertained, and 
seems still very generally to prevail, and this has 
doubtless largely provoked the attacks made on the 
truthfulness of the Bible record. Can not the mira- 
cle-workings spoken of have been wrought by acts 
of divine will precisely analogous to those of the hu- 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 23 

man ? What necessity is there for thinking that any 
force or law has been, or need be, destroyed ? The 
axe that was made to float on the water by God's 
command through his prophet was not necessarily 
made lighter than the water any more than my hand 
when I raise it is made lighter than the air. The na- 
ture of the materials remained the same, and gravity 
was still in full force, but God's will was under the 
axe as mine is under the hand. Precisely how it got 
there I can not explain, neither can I how mine got 
under the hand. The one is no more mysterious than 
the other, no more of a deviation from Nature's laws, 
but both volitions are, as far as I can discover, essen- 
tially the same. 

There perhaps is no Bible narrative whose truth 
has been more violently and generally assailed than 
that of the sun's being stayed upon Gibeon and the 
moon in the valley of Aijalon. It has been pro- 
nounced scientifically impossible. Some authors have 
attempted to explain it by claiming that it is only a 
quotation from the book of Asher, a mere poetical 
extravaganza embellished by that warmth of imagery 
characteristic of Oriental writings. But such a de- 
fense is not called for. The Christian believer may 
confidently challenge the scientist to show just cause 
for discrediting the statement. Indeed, the late Prof. 
O. M. Mitchell did not hesitate to assert that the ro- 
tary motion of the earth could be completely arrested 
in a few minutes without a single thing upon it being 
disturbed, and the arrest of this one motion was all 
that was required to effect the phenomenon. It 
would not have changed the earth's position in the 



24 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

heavens or its relations with its satellite, its sister 
planets, or its central snn. If the scientist can by his 
own will power put ont his hand and check the spin- 
ning of a top, what reason has he for thinking that 
God's will can not check the whirl of a world ? Has 
he any evidence that his will is more closely linked 
with matter than God's ? The same eminent author- 
ity also pointed out that, if he had chosen, God could 
have lengthened the day by simply condensing the 
atmosphere and thus changing its power of refraction. 
Whether he actually adopted either of these methods 
or used a better we with our yet extremely meager 
knowledge of Nature have of course no means of de- 
termining, but we can see even now how such an end 
was within the ready reach of a will as masterful and 
as wise as we are warranted in believing God's to be. 
The miracles of replenishing the widow's cruse of 
oil, turning the water to wine, feeding the five thou- 
sand with the five loaves and few fishes, though they 
involve something more than simply the overmaster- 
ing of one force by another, as in the incident just 
cited, and are at first more difficult of apprehension 
and belief, and he more exposed to the adverse criti- 
cisms of scientists, yet, after a careful scrutiny, will 
be found, after all, remarkably analogous in many 
respects to achievements of the human will, and no 
more contranatural, or improbable, or wrapped in a 
prof ounder mystery. There is no necessity for think- 
ing that in these or kindred acts any new matter or 
force was brought into existence. The oil and the 
wine, the miraculously provided cakes and fishes, dif- 
fered in no respect in their elemental atoms, or in the 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 25 

combinations of these atoms, from products which 
Nature, assisted and guided by man, had for centuries 
before been manufacturing. There was no call for 
any new matter, as it was already at hand in vast 
abundance. Christians need not claim this. Indeed, 
neither need they claim that, when, as it is recorded, 
in the beginning God created the heavens and the 
earth, he brought forth something out of nothing, as 
too many unthinkingly believe. Scientists may well 
pronounce such a notion absurd. An achievement 
like that would transcend even divine power, for it 
involves a contradiction, an impossibility. Something 
can not come out of nothing. It is nowhere revealed 
that there ever was a time when matter did not exist. 
The beginning spoken of in Genesis need have refer- 
ence only to the present order of things, the present 
processes of evolution through which the burning and 
non-burning balls of matter have been made to people 
space. Although this history may reach back over 
what to us are inconceivable periods, yet there un- 
questionably was a time when not a single sun or 
satellite anywhere existed, when matter must have 
been in some other radically different form. Further 
than this we need not go. If it was not originally a 
part of God, and is not now to be considered as an 
emanation from him, it must in our thought take 
rank as an equally self -existent and eternal entity. 
The fact is, the more prolonged and profound our 
study into its nature, the more impenetrable appears 
the mystery that shrouds it, for at first we can little 
realize that the substance we see and taste and handle 
is revealed to us simply by the effect produced upon 



26 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

our sense-nerves by forces that lie hidden behind it, 
so that we, when further advanced in our reflections, 
are led to query whether, after all, it is not the pres- 
ence of force that is revealed to our consciousness 
rather than that of matter as the medium of force, 
and whether it is not of the existence simply of force 
we have any certain knowledge. 

As I have said, we need not infer that in these 
miracle-workings any new substance was brought into 
being, but only new methods adopted, or hitherto un- 
used forces liberated, or greater direct power em- 
ployed by a sovereign will in carrying out its decrees. 
The human will had before this accomplished the 
same ends in other ways, for how else can we explain 
the presence of the oil which the prophet found in 
the widow's cruse, or the wine already drunk at the 
wedding feast, or the bread and fish in the baskets of 
Christ's disciples before he miraculously multiplied 
them ? But the human will had been compelled to 
resort to tedious and, for the most part, indirect 
methods to accomplish what the divine will wrought 
without delay, and apparently by direct impressment. 
I say " apparently," for it is quite possible that the 
methods employed were still indirect, though not ac- 
companied with any noticeable delay. We ourselves 
are continually shortening the processes we employ in 
carrying out our purposes. By a more perfect knowl- 
edge of Nature's laws we become more complete 
masters of her forces. "What giant strides have we 
already made in this direction, especially during this 
nineteenth century ! It is difficult for us to realize 
the nature and extent of our recent victories over 



SCIENCE AND PJRAYER. 27 

matter. "With what blank amazement would Wash- 
ington and his companions be filled were they now, 
without knowing what had taken place, to return to 
the country they fought to save ! For since Wash- 
ington closed his eyes to earth there have come the 
steamship, the locomotive, the telegraph, the tele- 
phone, the phonograph, and thousands of shortening 
processes. In his day — yes, and forty years later — to 
cross the American continent was a task of many 
weary months. Now we make the trip in less than a 
week. The news of Waterloo was three days reach- 
ing England, but tidings of the last bombardment of 
Alexandria, though halfway round the globe, took 
only as many minutes. The thunder of the first gun 
had hardly died away along the banks of the Nile be- 
fore the air was throbbing with its echo on the banks 
of the Thames. We also have of late, through our 
telephones, succeeded in holding easy converse with 
each other, though separated by leagues of distance, 
even in actually distinguishing the peculiar intonations 
of each other's voices. At what time these discov- 
eries of new forces and how to unfetter them shall 
reach their limit, who would be bold enough to pre- 
dict ? And yet not until science has won its final 
triumph over Nature should devotees of science be 
unwilling to concede that it is clearly possible that 
Bible miracles were the work of Nature's forces 
simply guided by a will thoroughly conversant with 
Nature's laws, which were within the reach of the 
directive power of the will of a man if illumined by 
the insight of a God. But even if these miracles 
were performed by direct will power, still we can 

3 



28 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

point to constantly recurring instances in which pre- 
cisely analogous effects are produced both in the vege- 
table and animal kingdoms, as well as in the higher 
realm of the human will. Scientific treatises call our 
attention not only to an inorganic but also to an or- 
ganic chemistry, and assure us that the vital forces, 
working through complex animal and vegetable or- 
ganisms, effect combinations of elements which out- 
side of their laboratories or the laboratories of man 
are never produced, and are marked by extreme in- 
stability, readily decomposing under the influence of 
heat or fermentation, so soon as their influence is 
withdrawn. Those mysterious forces lodged inside 
the walls of seeds prove themselves the masters of 
other forces equally mysterious lodged inside the walls 
of atoms. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen 
never would have congregated into such chemical 
groups, or arranged themselves along such lines of 
symmetry, or climbed to such dizzy heights, directly 
against the steady pull of gravity, were they not 
working under compulsion ; and so soon as they 
escape from the thrall of their taskmasters their old 
individuality comes back to them, their old modes of 
combining, their old circles of association return, and 
the unstable organic compounds are torn down into 
the more stable, original, inorganic ones. Here we 
witness one great class of Nature's forces— the atomic 

lorded over for a time by another and superior 

class. As we are daily witnesses of these facts, we 
never think of questioning them. 

Further than that, we see the products of vegeta- 
tive-vital forces taken possession of by animal- vital, 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 29 

and grouped into still more strange and higher com- 
pounds, and the chemic -compelled to plaj a part still 
more foreign to their first estate. We know that this, 
too, is a case of compulsion, for the very moment 
vitality ceases, disintegration begins. These nitroge- 
nous combinations are the very embodiment of insta- 
bility. 

"We are daily witnesses of more startling wonders 
still. They form part of our personal experiences. 
We find that we can by sheer will power compel 
even these higher forces of animal vitality, and 
through them the lower, to do our bidding. The 
late Dr. Carpenter, the foremost physiologist of his 
day, called especial attention to this fact, asserting 
that thus we can greatly add to the acuteness of any 
of our bodily senses, can actually compel the nourish- 
ing blood to flow to any part of the system and infuse 
new vigor. The experiences of artisans and artists, 
astronomers and microscopists, experts and specialists 
in every class of work, deaf-mutes and the blind, 
abundantly confirm this. There are few of us who 
have not found by actual experience that by calling 
up certain thoughts we can turn the cheek pale or 
crimson it with blushes, flood the eyes with tears or 
make them merrily twinkle or flash with angry fire, 
cause the heart to violently throb or intermit its beats, 
throw the blood to the brain, make the knees quake, 
the skin perspire, the whole body tremble, with in- 
tensity of emotion. The control which persons of 
cultivated histrionic powers have over the body to 
make it the vehicle of thought can be appreciated 
only by those who have witnessed the masters as they 



30 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

have entranced their audiences, and who have them- 
selves been thrilled and spirit-bound under the spell 
of their enchantments. 

If the vegetative forces can thus dominate over 
the atomic, the animal over the. vegetative, and the 
will of man over all, what valid objection can science 
urge to the Christian's creed that God's will can by 
direct impressment effect combinations in the ele- 
ments which Nature's forces indirectly and uncom- 
pelled bring about by slower processes according to 
the terms of their divine commission ? Why may 
not God's will have as immediate and complete a 
sovereignty over the earth or the universe as we over 
these complicate bodies of ours, which our spirits 
permeate through and through by their informing 
presence ? And why may not his sovereignty be in- 
conceivably more immediate and complete, and still 
retain in its relationships its marked analogy to the 
characteristics of force, which Science has herself re- 
corded ? Why may not the Divine will not only 
make bread, wine, and fish directly out of the sur- 
rounding elements, but heal lepers, restore the blind, 
or even raise the dead, and still do no more violence 
to Nature's systems of law than the human will is 
doing every day ? There are multitudes of well-authen- 
ticated instances in which persons have by simple 
determination checked for considerable periods the 
inroads of disease and even permanently broken its 
power. So startling have been the effects of the will 
and of the imagination over these susceptible bodies 
that there have arisen schools of theorists which ad- 
vocate that what have hitherto been pronoun eel in- 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 31 

curable diseases may be made to yield to the modern 
mind-cure" treatment. They have doubtless overrated 
the will's curative energy, but they certainly have made 
no mistake, except in the extent to which such cure 
can be carried. Sudden fright, worriment in finan- 
cial difficulties, brooding over loss of friends, remorse, 
chagrin, discouragement, loneliness, and longing — all 
have their depressing effect on the body, and if not 
checked in time will lead to serious illness, if not 
to positive brain lesion. Glad surprise, large and 
unlooked-for success, the return of long-absent loved 
ones, their rescue from danger or illness, apprecia- 
tive sympathetic recognition of merit, fruition of 
long-deferred hopes, the stir of patriotic or religious 
fervor — all have their medicinal influence, their exhil- 
arating, uplifting power. Thoughts sudden and start- 
ling have often brought sickness or banished it, brought 
death even in the midst of healthful life, or length- 
ened life's lease for those apparently passing within the 
shadow. If impalpable thought is clothed with such 
recuperative and destructive power, and if between 
the Creator and his creatures there are open avenues 
of communication, as there evidently must be (ave- 
nues more open and numerous than between man 
and man), what valid objection can be urged to the 
belief that God — with his infinitude of knowledge of 
the structure of the human frame and the laws regulat- 
ing its processes, and with his intimate and accurate 
acquaintance with its ever- varying environment — can, 
by turning the currents of thought by means of 
timely suggestions, by firing the fancy, rousing the 
conscience, raising the hope, occasioning and confirm- 



32 



OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 



ing the purpose, and by the even more mighty 
magnetism oi such positive and such sympathetic 
personality as his must be, summon health or sickness, 
life or death, when and where he chooses ? 

Thus the Christian's creed that God can answer 
prayer if he so desires, that there are multitudinous 
ways in which he may indirectly or directly carry out 
the mandates of his will without destroying any force 
or abrogating any law, finds in the discoveries of 
modern science most abundant confirmatory and illus- 
trative facts. It is only in the ill-founded theories 
and misinterpretations of some of the devotees of 
science that its claims have been denied. Christianity 
will some day summon science to the bar of the 
world's judgment as her strongest witness and most 
helpful ally. 



II. 

But 3 query our doubting Thomases, suppose you 
can thus show that scientific discoveries warrant a be- 
lief in the possibility of God's effectually interfering 
in the course of Nature and in the affairs of men, have 
they not also suggested and finally confirmed the 
opinion that, in point of fact, he never has ; that, from 
the very first, matter contained the promise and the po- 
tency of all life ; that the world is simply an immense 
organism which has reached its present complex per- 
fectness through inherent forces working under fixed 
laws of evolution ; that the stages of its growth have 
been as regular and predetermined as those of a 
tree ; that its social amenities, its arts and literatures, 
its ripened civilizations, have finally evolved out of 
the original amorphic fire mist through precisely the 
same regular gradations of growth as those out of 
which the rich grape cluster or the golden-sphered 
russet has come to crown the long energizings of the 
germ force that at the first lay hidden within the 
walls of the seed ? "We return to this query a most 
decided negative answer, and will endeavor to estab- 
lish, as the second point in our present argument, that 
God has actually interfered again and again ; that his 

33 



34 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

interferences have not been confined to any one age, 
but been present in all ages ; that his will, by its cre- 
ating and modifying power, has extended to all classes 
of phenomena ; that his mandates are still being 
issued ; and that their results, as asserted by recog- 
nized leaders in philosophy and in science, are present 
with us to-day. 

At the first, matter was formless, motionless, 
forceless, structureless, rayless. On this there is now 
no controversy among the different schools of thought. 
Moses and Herbert Spencer, the creationist and the 
evolutionist, the dates of whose writing are separated 
by three thousand years, on this point clasp hands. 

The belief is also as universal that this absolute 
simplicity of form and of nature has, after the lapse 
of ages, been converted into an almost infinite com- 
plexity, and that the cardinal changes have occurred 
in a certain order of sequence ; but in answering the 
question as to how these changes have been effected, 
these schools of thought at once part company. 

Those who affirm that in this unfolding there are 
no evidences of the active presence of an intelligent 
personal will power are confronted by seemingly in- 
superable objections which science itself has furnished. 
Science discloses a law of inertia so far-reaching that 
not a single particle of matter in all the wide universe 
can set itself in motion. It also discloses that there is 
not a single particle that is now at rest. Whence 
that mighty initial impulse that thrilled through space 
and is still felt after the lapse of untold ages peopling 
the heavens with whirling worlds ? Science also dis- 
closes that matter is made up of sixty-four or more 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 35 

different kinds of atoms, each inclosing within its walls, 
as we have already remarked, a force peculiar to itself, 
working nnder absolutely fixed conditions which no 
skilled chemist has ever succeeded in dislodging, or de- 
stroying, or changing in the minutest particular ; each 
having all the characteristics of a manufactured arti- 
cle as affirmed by Herschel, Faraday, and Clerk Max- 
well, and removed completely beyond the reach of 
Nature's power or man's device to make or mar, alter 
x>r destroy. Out of these, through their mathematic- 
ally exact chemical combinations, the whole inorganic 
world has been built. If there was once a time, as 
every evolutionist not only concedes but stoutly con- 
tends, when every atom was precisely like every other, 
and not a single one had the faintest touch of attract- 
ive or repellent or affinitive force, through what in- 
strumentality in some far past did these elemental 
forces, these individualized somethings, find birth and 
an abiding place within infinitesimal and indestructi- 
ble walls of matter ? We find on them no traces of 
development and no marks of decay. They are none 
other than God's immortals. Over the nature of their 
being, as well as over the cradle of their birth, there 
has been thrown a veil of mystery through whose 
closely woven meshes there comes no ray of reveal- 
ing light to the anxiously peering eyes of science, and 
whose hiding folds no hand on earth has power to 
lift, except the reverent hand of faith. 

Skilled specialists, after repeated trials to demon- 
strate that vitality may spring through spontaneous 
generation from dead matter, now candidly confess 
that all their efforts have thus far proved unavailing. 



36 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

Dr. Bastian with tireless zeal has worked to this end, 
and thought he reached it, but in every one of his 
experiments there has been detected some fatal flaw. 
The declaration that no life springs except from some 
living germ has stood the crucial test of the science 
of this nineteenth century. The lamented Agassiz 
affirmed this in his last lecture. Carpenter, Huxley, 
Tyndall, all the leading scientists, with refreshing 
candor, reaffirm it to-day. 

With equal unanimity the world's savants point 
us to a fire period during which not only all the 
oceans and the soils, but the very beds of oceans, all 
the mines of metal and quarries of rock that form the 
earth, were once but drifting clouds of burning ether 
in whose fierce heat the hardiest germ would shrivel 
instantly and disintegrate. Whence, then, those first 
eggs out of which sprang the progenitors of those 
countless multitudes of living organisms that have 
from age to age so peopled our planet ? 

The secret of the egg, its nature and its origin, 
quite as seriously puzzles and confounds the evolu- 
tionist as does that of the elemental atom. Within 
its walls there hides a wonder-working fairy. Though 
not secure from intrusion, as is the oxygen or the car- 
bon force, she as successfully eludes the prying eyes 
of mortals and is wrapped in as deep a mystery as to 
what she is or whence she came. With the lenses and 
mirrors of his microscope the scientist tries to look 
through the curtained windows of her palace. Baffled 
in that, he presumes with subtile chemistry to bolt 
unbidden into her very presence, but the sprite, 
warned by the first footfall of the intruder, passes 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 37 

with viewless feet through some secret postern gate 
out into the unknown beyond, and never conies back 
again. After this he compounds in his laboratory the 
like chemical ingredients of which he has found the 
egg composed, and in precisely the same proportions, 
and then exposes this, his skillfully built protoplasm, 
to a carefully adjusted heat. Weeks pass, but no life. 
For a third time he finds himself facing failure. At 
last, with humbled pride, he accepts the truth that 
germinal force is not some property inherent in mat- 
ter, but rather an organizing impulse introduced from 
without, separable at any time from the mass over 
which for a season it is made dominant, the product 
of a personal creative will whose impalpable thought 
it is commissioned to incarnate into living form. 

Again, between not only the four primordial divi- 
sions of the animal kingdom and also the classes, or- 
ders, and genera, but even the one hundred and thirty 
thousand different species, it has been demonstrated, 
after a century of most painstaking exploration and ex- 
periment, that there have been great gulfs fixed which 
no natural, delegated force has power to pass. "Within 
certain lines it has been discovered that species can 
be modified into varieties through climatic or dietetic 
influences or cross-breeding, but changes thus effected 
are found quite unstable, the parental types reappear- 
ing through the law of atavism when in new sur- 
roundings or removed from the culturing care of man. 
But, however, when an attempt is made to develop 
absolutely new, distinct species out of old ones, natu- 
ralists encounter in the law of the sterility of hybrids 
an uplifted iron hand, and hear a stern voice, saying, 



38 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

"Thus far, but no farther." That voice they are 
rapidly learning to recognke as the commanding voice 

of God. 

The origin of bodily organs is another of Nature's 
many secrets to which evolution theories furnish no 
key. These organs are found on examination to be 
contrivances of the most complicated character, com- 
bining often into a single group hundreds of closely 
correlated parts so nicely adjusted, so absolutely inter- 
dependent in many instances, that the absence of any 
one would not only seriously cripple the others, but 
render them totally inoperative, hopelessly defeating 
the purpose of the mechanism. These parts being 
thus unquestionably complemental one to the other 
and incapable of performing any useful office unless 
combined, their origin and present combination can 
be accounted for only as a projection into physical 
fact of an ideal previously conceived and matured by 
some organizing mind. It seems absurd to suppose 
that each part could have been originated independ- 
ently, without any reference to the others, and slowly 
developed, in its own time and way, out of some mi- 
nute, indefinite, fortuitous variations, either through 
the influence of its environment or through some in- 
ternal blind force, into its present perfected and per- 
manent form, and then that they all, through some 
chance circumstance, should have fallen into each 
other's company, and have proved so exactly suited 
and so absolutely essential each to each as to become 
at last thus inseparably associated in close corporate 



work. 



Exploring parties of geologists, naturalists, and 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 39 

anatomists^ after having with inexhaustible patience, 
with trained powers of observation, with most ingen- 
ious instruments of research, ransacked the rock rec- 
ord of earth's crust down through even the Silurian 
strata to the very dawn of being, and having exam- 
ined the present occupants of every continent and sea, 
now testify in the name of science that nowhere 
among extinct species or living ones have there come 
to light any facts proving that there ever were any 
such processes as evolutionists so boldly announced to 
have taken place in introducing the different grada- 
tions of sentient life on this planet. 

The same is true of the many curious instances of 
mimicries in Nature, and indeed of all phenomena of 
correlated growth. 

Materialistic expounders of the universe also find 
themselves confronted on every side by the ever-re- 
curring phenomena of instinct, and are at their wits' 
end to account for that perfect poise and mastery of 
body exhibited by some animals directly after birth, 
for that accurate intuitive knowledge of perspective, 
that minute familiarity with first-witnessed scenes, 
that unrivaled ingenuity of design and flawless finish 
in mechanical execution of works performed without 
experience or a guiding model or the aid of instruc- 
tion, that instantaneous grasp of the most occult prin- 
ciples in natural philosophy and profound acquaintance 
with the laws of chemical and vital action, and espe- 
cially that far glance of prophecy on the accuracy of 
which depend the lives not only of individuals, but 
even of entire species. Theorists who cling to a nat- 
uralistic explanation denominate instinct a lapsed in- 



40 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

telligence, affirming that it is the accumulated wisdom 
of past generations acquired through painful and pro- 
tracted experience and handed down under the laws 
of heredity in the form of fixed habits and of consti- 
tutional mental bent. But scientific investigations in 
natural history have brought to light thousands of 
facts to which such an explanation is wholly inappli- 
cable, which fairly laugh these theories down. 

The spider that builds its tiny diving-bell, anchors 
it with strong cable to the river bottom, and distends 
its walls with air pressed from entangling meshes of 
web on its abdomen, and then, within this, its royal 
pavilion, that shines through the water like a globe of 
woven silver, rears with watchful wisdom, amid seem- 
ingly most hostile surroundings, its brood of hungry 
children, is one out of a vast multitude of living wit- 
nesses that testify to a direct divine informing of the 
mental life below the human, the impulsive prompt- 
ings of instinct being followed blindly by those crea- 
tures which stand thus in imperative need of its guid- 
ing wisdom. As well accredit an intelligent self- 
conscious purpose to those particles of matter which, 
when the time is ripe, arrange themselves with such 
promptness and precision along the lines of symmetry 
which form the faces of crystals or the exquisite pat- 
terns of flowers, as to ascribe to these lower orders of 
sentient being the knowledge, the invention, and the 
prescience which their works display. 

But over the question of the advent and distinctive 
attributes of man the battle of the schools has been 
most hotly contested, calling into action on both sides 
every reserved force of scholarship and mental acu- 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 41 

men, as the issues at stake transcend every other, in- 
volving nol; only the foundations of theistic faith, but 
even the very evidences of an endless life. 

The extensive scientific investigations which have 
grown out of this heated controversy have brought to 
light a vast array of most interesting and significant 
facts to which the extreme evolutionist and the equally 
extreme creationist has each gone for corroborative 
proofs of their theories, and neither of them gone in 
vain. 

Man, in his body, in his instincts, and in his mental 
traits, bears many very striking resemblances to the 
brute tribes, suggesting some closer tie than the strict 
creationist is yet ready to admit ; although out of the 
lines of affinity with the numerous ape and lemuroid 
species that are by scientists classed with man in the 
suborders of primates, there could be constructed, as 
a distinguished writer has remarked, "only a net- 
work and not a ladder." There have also been found 
in man equally marked differences, suggesting, on the 
other hand, that in effecting the changes there were 
actively present higher forces than mechanical or 
chemical or even vital, and that there was introduced, 
as hi the case of the atom and the egg, an absolutely 
new ingredient, of which there was no germ even 
anywhere existing. 

In man we miss the brute's great teeth and claws, 
we note fewer instincts, a lessened speed, a weakened 
muscle, a blunted sense, a back laid bare, a skin left 
tender; divergencies which would denote marked 
degeneracy were they not most strangely accompanied 
by a vastly increased mass and multiplied convolution 



42 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

of brain. Here appears that same deep correlation on 
which the parts of a bodily organ are built, bearing 
the same emphatic testimony to the prior existence, 
the personal presence, and the plastic power of some 
intelligent, organizing will. To be sure, there is here 
no change in the material ingredients. Neither is 
there any when out of the soil a flower unfolds its 
tinted petals and fills the air with its fragrance ; but 
as the soil, the moisture, and the sunlight have no 
power to thus combine into this marvel of grace and 
color and sweetness until the directive force of some 
buried germ thrills them with its talismanic touch, so 
neither in the body of the brute nor in the nature of 
its environment dwells there any power known to 
science capable of producing such a circle of comple- 
mental changes, physical and vital, as mark the ad- 
vent of man. 

Furthermore, science in its explorations in the 
higher realm of thought has brought to light a class 
of phenomena so entirely novel as to indicate that 
there has taken place something more than a mere 
modification of the four forces— mechanic, atomic, 
vital, and instinctive— which have been successively 
set at work in the world ; that an absolutely new force 
has been ushered in— a force possessing characteris- 
tics so fundamentally different from all others that 
they can in no sense be regarded as its progenitors, 
and a force not only of a uniqueness so complete as 
to thus preclude any suggestion of kinship, but of a 
uniqueness so peculiar that it becomes a travesty on 
scientific interpretation to explain it simply as an un- 
folding under the universal law of evolution of 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 43 

another one of the hidden, inherent properties of 
matter. And this new force, known as a self -con- 
scions and responsibly sovereign ego, is apparently 
the exclusive inheritance of man, is his distinctive 
feature, lifts him completely up out of the low plane 
of brute being. 

In the mental life below the human there are 
semblances of self-conscious, deliberative thought of 
moral discernment and of responsible free will ; and 
instances of this nature are so many and so striking 
the belief is prevalent, not only in scientific but even 
m religious circles, that we differ from the brutes 
only m having a clearer thought, a deeper discern- 
ment, a wider freedom ; but there are now advanced 
investigators of the highest attainments and of inter- 
national celebrity who believe that those semblances 
are wholly delusive, and that in this mysterious panto- 
mimic life below us there are no really reliable evi- 
dences of the presence of a distinctive, self-conscious 
spiritual force constituting true personality. Animals 
unquestionably possess in common with us blind 
instinct, sensation, direct perception, association of 
objects and ideas, automatic attention, involuntary 
memory, indeliberate volition, reproductive imagina- 
tion, sympathetic emotion, and emotional expression. 
Nearly, if no t quite, all of the phenomena of their 
thought-life can come through the exercise of just 
these low forms of mentality, and do not necessarily 
imply that they ever get beyond the domain of the 
senses, that they have any abstract, deliberative, intro- 
spective thought, that their consciousness ever reaches 
up into consciousness of self. Their mental states 



44 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

may be, and probably are, simply passive, their mem- 
ories and imaginations but prolonging and multiply- 
ing their sense-perception through laws of association 

and suggestion. 

It is true there are some few phenomena that do 
not seem susceptible of this explanation ; but as we 
find clearly within the charmed circle of instinct where 
there is uniformly nothing but blind obedience to a 
God-given impulse, acts which to ordinary observers 
show 1 deliberation, design, profound reasoning, even 
moral purpose on the part of the animal, we naturally 
feel warranted in assuming that these occasional in- 
stances met with apparently outside of this circle, and 
indicating that animals at times really enter within 
the vestibule, at least, of self-conscious life, are de- 
lusive, that the real mental background to these 
unvoiced acts may after all be God's, and not theirs. 

The belief that thus with the advent of man 
there was introduced an entirely new force, a spiritual, 
self-conscious, personal entity, seems to find further 
warrant in the fact that he alone has ever manifested 
a desire or shown a capacity for progress, intention- 
ally improving on the past. Did animals really have 
souls in them, did they possess truly reflective facul- 
ties like our own, the developing influences of the 
tens of thousands of years that have one by one 
rolled round since their life began would have 
wrought in them an advancement so marked that 
their mental status would long since have been placed 
beyond all controversy. 

That this non-progressiveness is not rightly charge- 
able to bodily imperfections is clearly evinced in the 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 45 

wonder-workings of the ant, the spider, and the bee. 
Apes have hands, bnt they have never yet bnilt a fire, 
or replenished one, or shaped a tool. 

This belief finds still further warrant in the fact 
that with brutes instinct reigns ; with man, reason ; 
that they have their thinking done for them ; he is 
forced to do his himself ; that they reach perfection, 
without effort, at a single bound ; he, if at all, only 
after repeated and disheartening failure ; that with 
them the final purpose seems to be simply to conserve 
the body ; with him to improve the mind ; that with 
them the supplying of physical wants brings unbroken 
peace, a deep content, the horizon of their thought 
shutting closely down about the now and the near ; 
with him there is ever a vague unrest, an unsatisfied 
longing, an indefinable dread, angle-winged expect- 
ancies. 

How can we account for God's pouring out such 
wealth of inventive thought in care for brutes' bodies 
and showing not the least concern, so far as we can 
see, for preserving and developing anything nobler 
except on the ground that he has planted in them no 
germs of anything nobler to be developed, that he 
has never given them any real, personal self to be 
conscious of, that with them body is absolutely the 
very top of being ? 

While, then, there are strong suggestions, if not 
positive evidences, in Nature of some mysterious re- 
lationship between men and brutes, that relationship 
is certainly, as I have already suggested, as remote as 
that existmg between the flower and the soil out of 
which it springs. The dull clod has no magic gift of 



46 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

self -transfiguration, but displays merely a capacity for 
a passive yielding to the plastic touch of some newly 
arrived vital force, when out of its well-nigh shape- 
less, scentless, colorless dust are wrought the queenly 
robes and peerless perfume and richly crimson blush 

of roses. 

The investigations of science bring the certain 
knowledge of the direct action of the Divine will still 
closer to us — even within the circle of our own indi- 
vidual experiences. Sir George Mivart, Fellow of 
the Eoyal Academy, who stands in the forefront of 
science, and Prof. Budolf Schmid, President of 
the Theological Seminary at Schonthal, Wiirtemberg, 
who stands in the forefront of philosophy, claim that 
self-conscious and responsibly free spirits must be new 
and independent existences transcending Nature, they 
going so far as to state outright that each human 
soul is the result of a separate creative fiat of the 

Almighty. 

We might enforce this their position by remark- 
ing that out of the old nothing new can come except 
new combinations, and the soul is believed to be an 
absolutely new element and not simply a new form 
of an old one. This our self -consciousness positively 
affirms, and we must implicitly rely on its testimony, 
or our whole foundation for any belief is hopelessly 
swept away. It also says that each soul is an indivisi- 
ble unit, that there can not be transmitted from par- 
ent to child any portion of the ego. Kesemblances 
may be, but nothing of the child's spiritual entity has 
been or can be derived from his progenitors. Human 
souls are God's direct gift. To the fashioning of 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 47 

each one he has given his personal attention. It is 
only its fleshy covering and its other material envi- 
ronment that he has intrusted to the care of secondary 
causes. 

Facts brought to light by modern scientific inves- 
tigations and closely analyzed by modern scientific 
methods are thus daily diffusing and deepening the 
belief among the candid and thoughtful that the prog- 
ress through the ages from the simple to the complex, 
from amorphic matter to a peopled world, has been 
something more than a methodic, self- originated, and 
self -sustained evolution of elements held hidden in 
matter from all eternity, that absolutely new forces 
have from time to time been introduced from without 
through direct creative fiats of a personal will, the 
old forces, inside their limitations, being, as the work 
progressed, utilized, when found available, simply as 
avenues for ushering in the new. 



III. 

"We now come to the third general division of our 
theme— that God not only can effectively interfere, 
either by direct or indirect methods, without working 
any disorder, abrogating any law, or destroying any 
force ; and that he not only has, in fact, thus interfered 
again and again in all ages and in countless matters 
of moment, but, further, that it is not only not pre- 
sumptuous, but most natural and reasonable, for us 
to expect that he will interfere for us individually, 
however insignificant we may at present seem to be. 

It is claimed by those who controvert this position 
that God has, as we have already remarked, adopted 
broad, comprehensive plans, in which he has regard 
to general interests and not to exceptional cases ; that 
in these plans he is as unyielding as granite ; that his 
interferences have been in the nature of creative fiats, 
simply for completing these wide-reaching original 
designs ; that he has no time or thought for individ- 
ual cases ; and that, if any one of us would secure 
any of the benefits of the present order, we must 
make these plans a careful study and adjust ourselves 
to them as best we can, and not expect their author 
to break in upon them and give his personal attention 

48 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 49 

to our private, insignificant interests. In other words, 
we must rely on our own exertions for any modifica- 
tions of our environment, must master the secrets of 
Nature, comply with her laws, if we would make her 
forces our servitors and become masters of our circum- 
stances. 

There is apparent warrant for such a view. It 
would seem as if the individual were indeed lost sight 
of— everything is on so vast a scale, every part of 
this wonderful mechanism of a world is so far-reach- 
ing in its results. The earth's whirl on its axis brings 
day and night for all ; the inclination of its axis to 
the plain of its orbit and its circuit round the sun de- 
termine the change of seasons, the rise and fall of 
tides, the width of zones, the force and direction of 
the great trade winds, the character and limitations 
of vegetable growths, the nature and habitat of the 
fishes, the birds, and the beasts. The sun ceaselessly 
pours out in every direction that mysterious influence 
which we call light. It indifferently enters hovels 
and marble halls. It comes through every open door- 
way, every uncurtained window, every crack and 
crevice. It purples the velvet petal of the violet and 
fills it with fragrance, and afterward, with seemingly 
heartless haste, rots that same petal to shapeless, color- 
less, odorless dust again. It kisses the sheltered val- 
ley into waving harvests, and at the same time, with 
other of its rays, scorches the sand wastes with death's 
desolation and silence. At one time it darts in 
through the pupil of the eye and, with exquisite art, 
transfers to the retina the outer glory and thrills the 
soul with strange rapture ; at another, when the deli- 



50 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

cate nerves are aflame with fever, it tortures with its 
touch, and blisters and blackens that very same can- 
vas it had with its swift pencil painted with splendor. 
An atmosphere miles in thickness completely envelops 
the earth. It forces itself in everywhere. All gills 
and spiracles and lungs must breathe it, though some- 
times it comes loaded with poison, instead of balm. 
Now with gentlest zephyr-touch it gratefully fans the 
cheek of an invalid, anon with the swift sweep of a cy- 
clone it levels a forest or unroofs a city. "Water is as 
omnipresent as air. The air is indeed permeated with 
it, as all substances, fluids and solids, have their every 
particle incased in air. What interminable leagues 
of tossing billows, with their glistening foam-caps 
breaking over the white-winged sea gulls of commerce 
as they hasten on venturesome errands over the 
treacherous depths, some to reach safe shelter, it may 
be, in distant ports, some to fly wildly before an 
angry storm and sink into the opening jaws of a hun- 
gry sea ! Fire, though not actually, yet potentially, is 
also omnipresent. Even the ingredients of water 
itself will burn, and in the fierce flame which their 
chemical union kindles, the metals and the earths, 
even fire-clay itself, will be consumed to ashes. For- 
ests, grasses, and peat bogs, underlying beds of coal, 
countless reservoirs of oil, are ready for the torch. 
Angels and demons of combustion are all about us. 
They stand in waiting on every hand, ready with their 
ruddy faces to beam kindliest cheer from our furnaces 
and chimney corners and swinging chandeliers, or to 
blaze in mad fury amid the crumbling walls and 
rafters of our homes. They will cook for our tables, 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 5! 

smelt our ores, draw our trains of trade, turn the 
wheels in our workshops, multiply our comforts a 
thousandfold, or, if we are not aware, will, as very 
fiends in their wild work of a night, turn our proud 
Chicagos into smoldering ruins. In some far past 
the whole earth was but a burning ball, and lava 
streams and earthquakes and smoking craters tell us 
that the primal fires still rage within. This elemental 
force has been provided on a grand scale. The eco- 
nomic scheme of which it forms a part embraces the 
farthest fixed star hi its infinitude of thought. 

Electricity, the latest utilized force of Nature, has 
been found to bear the same stamp of universality 
and to stand toward us in this same twofold relation- 
ship. It falls from the clouds in death-dealing thun- 
derbolts ; it also with deft fingers renders invaluable 
service in the civilizing arts of life. It becomes the 
winged Mercury of the mind, carrying thought-mes- 
sages across continents and under seas with well-nigh 
the swiftness of light. 

As we thus study Nature force by force, attribute 
by attribute, and note this feature of universality pre- 
vailing all, and this dual relationship which each sus- 
tains of blessing or cursing, as angel or devil, how 
powerful and painful the questioning, whether, after 
all, it is not too true that exceptional cases, or indi- 
viduals during exceptional crises, have failed to enter 
as factors into the thought of God in the dispensations 
of his providence ; whether individuals have not been 
placed in the midst of the same possibilities; and 
whether it does not rest with each to bravely make 
the best of his environment and trust to his own right 



52 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

arm and stout heart to carry him through ! And, be- 
sides, is not God's universe so wide, are not his cares 
so multitudinous and complex, that he has time to 
make only general classifications, establish wide-reach- 
ing laws, delegate great secondary causes, arrange his 
forces on a scale graduated with mathematical pre- 
cision, and set them at work in grooves unaltera- 
bly fixed ? Is he not necessitated to take simply a 
sweeping glance, contemplate in the mass the swarm- 
ing myriads of beings evolved from the dust as the 
grand processes of life go on ? Has he not thought 
it sufficient to establish the great dynasties of organ- 
ized living creatures that through the ages have 
seemed to rise and sink with the regularity of the 
tides of the sea ? "We can not even number the mass- 
ive worlds which he has set whirling through illimit- 
able space, and which must demand at least his gen- 
eral supervision and require his constantly sustaining 

power. 

At first glance we are apt to conclude, viewing the 
subject from this standpoint, that there is indeed no 
individualizing in God's providences, no attention 
paid to detail, no more note taken of the units that 
make up the mass than the farmer takes of the sepa- 
rate kernels of wheat which he harvests from his 
fields. Here moves by a cloud of locusts dense 
enough to darken the sun; an east wind rises and 
greedy ocean billows swallow them up. A volcano 
bursts, and a Herculaneum with its thronging human 
life is swiftly buried in a grave of ashes. There 
comes an earthquake shock, and a Sodom sinks into 
the sea ; a steamboat disaster, a railroad accident, a 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 53 

visitation of cholera, a breaking out of fire, a caving 
in of a colliery, a whirl of a cyclone, and scores and 
hundreds of human lives perish in an hour. Is it 
probable that the individual arrests the attention of 
the Almighty in the great ongoings of his providence ? 
Have you and I, in our little corner, ever attracted his 
attention, much more excited his interest ? Has his 
great heart ever beat in love for each one of us ? Has 
he ever called us by some dear name and watched 
with tender solicitude the unfolding of our powers, 
entered into sympathy when our hearts have bled 
with bereavement, or been crushed with failure, or 
made desolate by estrangement or unfeeling neglect ? 
How many hours in the life history of every one of 
us are darkened by a sense of utter loneliness ! How 
many times our hearts cry out for the appreciative 
sympathy of a divine companionship ! Oh, for that 
comforting assurance which blessed Christ's sorrow- 
wrung heart when he said, " And yet I am not alone, 
for the Father is with me " ! Is it presumptuous for 
us to think that that assurance may also be ours ? 
That it is not, I believe to be the unmistakable teach- 
ings not only of the Sacred Scriptures, but of all ani- 
mate and inanimate Nature arid of all sound phi- 
losophy. 

The Scriptures are full of this consoling revelation. 
There is rarely a page not illumined by it. To teach 
it was one of the distinctive features of Christ's min- 
istry. How he delighted to dwell on the brooding 
watchfulness of the Father ! Id reassuring his dis- 
ciples he told them that God, who gave his personal 
attention to the clothing of the grass and the lilies, 



54 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

and was not so great or so busy as to overlook the fall 
of even a little sparrow, surely would keep loving and 
sleepless watch over them. Even the hairs of their 
heads, he confidently assured them, were all num- 
bered. 

Such like disclosures, so many and so explicit, 
throughout the books of the Bible, find most abun- 
dant confirmation in the facts of science. The geolo- 
gist and the chemist, the botanist and the naturalist, 
have in their separate departments found phenomena 
which the Christian philosopher may boldly claim as 
incontestable evidences of God's sympathetic presence 
with his children. The more deeply Nature is searched, 
the more convincing the proofs of God's infinite pains- 
taking for his creatures. His plans to these ends have 
evidently been thought out to their minutest details. 
We are overwhelmed with astonishment as we see 
into what small concerns he has suffered his thoughts 
to enter, and out of them, by an ingenuity of contriv- 
ing possible only to a Creator of limitless resources, has 
wrought results of far-reaching import. JSTo candid 
student of Nature can fail of becoming profoundly 
convinced that there is absolutely nothing, however 
inconspicuous, that does not only embody a divine 
thought, but in some way plays a part in carrying out 
the promptings of a divine love. 

If any one in his hours of depression is haunted 
with the feeling that he is too insignificant to attract 
God's personal attention, much more be the object of 
his constant loving care, he will find himself wonder- 
fully reassured if he will lay down the telescope and 
take up the microscope, for he will soon see that the 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 55 

fault is all in himself, in that he has had a far too 
meager conception of God's thought-range and breadth 
of sympathy. Such an examination will disclose to 
him that, as a positive fact, God has somehow found 
abundant time, notwithstanding the multiplicity and 
the magnitude of the interests of his vast universe, to 
give his personal attention to the equipping and pro- 
visioning of beings of infinitesimal minuteness. That 
mighty hand, in whose hollow the heavens are held, 
has also sufficient delicacy and precision of touch to 
fashion the finely reticulated wing of the ephemeron. 
The same art conception and marvelous skill that 
paint the sunset and bend the rainbow have touched 
with most brilliant pigment each feather in the plum- 
age of the fly. The same musician who has con- 
ceived the grand organ harmonies of ocean billow and 
thunderburst has also adjusted, part to part, with 
loving care, that sweetest of musical instruments, the 
throat of the skylark, whose wild rapture of song 
so thrilled the ethereally gifted Shelley that he im- 
mortalized it in verse as the blithe spirit-voice of 
the air. 

God apparently shows not only the same infinitude 
of care, but the same keen personal delight, in his 
works in the domain of the minute as in that of the 
vast and the mighty. Look deeply as we may into 
Nature with our most powerful artificial lenses, even 
to the very microscope limit, we can detect no hasty 
oversight, no cold indifference, but exhaustlessness of 
patience and lavishment of thought, and in every de- 
tail of each work an absolute faultlessness of finish. 
Illustrations of these comforting truths abound all 



50 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

about us. The world is full of them, but I have time 
to cite only two or three. 

There is a class of microscopic animals, the Diato- 
macece, which have existed in such vast numbers that 
entire mountains have been found composed of their 
remains. The forms of their infinitesimal shells when 
magnified are discovered to be of most exquisite 
beauty and of every conceivable pattern. "In the 
same drop of moisture there may be some dozen or 
twenty forms, each with its own distinctive pattern, 
all as constant as they are distinctive, yet all having 
apparently the same habits and without any percepti- 
ble difference of function." Neither sexual nor nat- 
ural selection has, as far as we can discover, any gov- 
erning influence here. In these varied beauties are 
there not evidences, which scientific theories have so 
far failed successfully to controvert, of Grod's giving 
his personal attention to the adornment of the minutest 
of his creatures, to his conceiving and embodying in 
innumerable faultless forms and pleasing combina- 
tions of tints his conceptions of beauty ? How this 
infinite painstaking has benefited these mysterious 
specks of life we have no means of determining. 
Perhaps they come aud go without having the faintest 
intimation of the symmetries and colorings which the 
Divine Architect and Artist has, by the interposition 
of direct will power, introduced into their calcareous 
palace homes. We can not prove that it was for their 
especial benefit that these patterns and paintings were 
designed. Perhaps the ultimate purpose was the aes- 
thetic culture of inquiring human souls, or it may be 
that other and even higher ends will come to light in 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 57 

some after-age. Certain it is such painstaking implies 
a purpose, and whether we can discover it or not, the 
fact brings with it, to every thoughtful mind, with 
overwhelmingly convincing force, that God is per- 
sonally conversant with, and has taken an active 
personal interest in, the life-furnishings of creatures 
so minute that their individual forms are to us abso- 
lutely invisible without the aid of the microscope, 
and so low in the scale of being that naturalists are 
still divided in opinion as to whether they are animals 
or plants. 

The inorganic world equally abounds in illustrative 
proofs of this same comforting truth. I will select a 
single one. The luminous flame that has brightened 
human homes through all civilized centuries is an aeri- 
form chemical combination of hydrogen with oxygen 
and carbon. The difference in the degree of inflam- 
mability of the first two gases is the cause of all the 
illuminating properties of the flame, and yet that 
difference is so slight that the times of their ignition 
are separated by a period absolutely imperceptible to 
our unaided senses. The hydrogen takes fire a very 
small fraction of a second before the carbon, and as it 
unites with the oxygen of the air it lets go its chem- 
ical hold on the carbon, which, the instant it is thus 
released, changes from a gas to a solid, so that into the 
colorless flame of hydrogen is constantly being show- 
ered the finest carbonic dust. These minute particles 
become little glowing coals emitting a brilliant light 
just for an instant, and then, like the hydrogen, spring 
into the chemical embrace of the all-devouring oxygen. 
The infinite painstaking here displayed, the delicate 



58 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

nicety of adjustment, the critical attention to the mi- 
nutest details, are no less astounding than the world- 
embracing beneficence of the results. 

The case of the little brown water-spider, to which 
brief allusion has already been made, is the only other 
illustration I shall have space to give of God's pre- 
sonal, painstaking care over the minutest matters in 
his kingdom. In common with the numerous species 
of this order of articulates which abound in all parts 
of the world, this diminutive creature has had given 
to it four pairs of seven-jointed legs, the last joint 
armed with two hooks toothed like a comb, frontal 
poison-fed claws, eight eyes, and a multitude of spin- 
nerets from whose infinitesimal openings issues a gluti- 
nous liquid which the instant the air strikes it hardens 
into threads invisible from their fineness until they are 
massed together into a single, strong, elastic cable. 
But it has furnishings and instinctive impulses pecul- 
iarly its own. Its body has a thick covering of hair 
which it has been taught to most curiously utilize. 
Strange to say, this air-breathing animal is prompted 
to build its home and rear its little ones on the beds 
of streams, and the devices by which it has been en- 
abled to surmount what to us would seem insuperable 
obstacles may well fill us with admiring wonder. It 
weaves a diving-bell, air-tight, mouth downward, and 
ties it tightly to the bottom. Then coming to the 
surface, it covers its hairy abdomen with fine web, lies 
on its back until all the interstices between the hairs 
and the meshes of web are filled with air, swims under 
the bell, presses out into it the entangled air, comes 
again to the surface, and repeats the process, until all 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 59 

the water at first in the bell has been displaced and 
the bell made habitable. 

In all this procedure the spider has unquestionably 
been guided by Him who equipped it. !No candid 
and appreciative observer can fail to note this ; for 
what, can it be imagined, first determined it, suppos- 
ing it to be following out its own thinking, thus to 
locate its nest under water, for it has no gills fitting 
it for such a habitat, or how did it study out so ingen- 
ious a method for making such an undertaking possi- 
ble ? The inventor of this bell must have known that 
air is lighter than water, that it can be mechanically 
retained in fine fabrics, and that when introduced into 
an inverted receiver it will crowd out the water, in- 
stead of being absorbed by it. Has this spider been 
so close a student of Nature as to have discovered 
these laws of physics, and is it so gifted an inventor 
as thus ingeniously to have applied its knowledge, 
without either instruction or experience ? This dain- 
tiest of palaces must have been thought out in all its 
details before the spider began spinning its first 
thread, for the weaver shows no hesitancy and makes 
no mistake. It must also have been the work of a 
single mind, for its parts are so intimately correlated 
that the absence of a single one would not simply 
obscure the conception, it would totally destroy it. 
There must be either perfection or flat failure. This 
alternative was presented to the first spider of the 
species. I would like to show, had I time, how this 
little creature is also equally blessed with divine 
guidance as to how and where it shall deposit its eggs, 

how inwrap them in clusters with silken cocoons for 
5 



60 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

protection and warmth, when and how to release the 
tiny babies from their coverings and transport and 
feed them when first they come, as they are sure to 
do, in swarming and hungry companies. 

The equally marvelous prescience and skill dis- 
played by all instinct-guided creatures and their equally 
marvelous equipment for their work afford us illus- 
trative proofs without number of God's most intimate 
acquaintance with, and loving care for, the momen- 
tary interests of earth's speechless, soulless, perishing 
myriads. Neither their implements nor their skill 
can be accounted for as the slow outcome of stern ex- 
perience, for their instinctive promptings are followed 
blindly, and their wisdom and skill antedate experi- 
ence, and are independent of the aids of instruction 
or of any working model. To the progenitors at least 
of every animal species there has come a direct divine 
impressment and informing. New wants with cor- 
respondingly new implements and new instinctive 
impulses issued from the creative will of the Almighty. 
Provision was doubtless made at the incoming of each 
species for the transmission, through laws of heredity, 
of such traits as should constitute its distinctive en- 
dowment, and thus a general supervision over each 
species instituted. 

But still more specific provision seems to have 
been made to cover exceptional necessities, to answer 
the demands of exceptional crises in the individual 
lives of the seemingly most insignificant. There ap- 
pears to have been left a certain latitude of modifi- 
cation and amendment of instinctive promptings. As 
I have already remarked, animals unquestionably 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 61 

possess, in common with ns, not only blindly followed 
instincts, bnt sense-perception, association of objects 
and ideas, automatic attention, involuntary memory 
indeliberate volition, reproductive imagination, sym- 
pathetic emotion, and emotional expression. Though 
the phenomena of their thought-life may be classed 
under these lower forms of mentality, though the Y 
may never rise to deliberative, abstract, introvertive 
thinking, may never attain to self -consciousness, hav- 
ing no self to be conscious of, may never have the 
clear light of reason or ever exercise a responsibly 
free choice, yet they do seem to have had some means 
provided for supplementing instinct in those peculiar 
emergencies for which no general provision through 
instinct could be secured. This clearly evidences to 
us that God's providential care, even over the low- 
liest, extends beyond the segregated mass that con- 
stitutes the species to each separate individual in it 
and even to that individual's exceptional needs. The 
thinking here displayed, though outside the circle of 
instinct proper, will still be found, on final analysis, 
to be God's, and not theirs. 

To receive the full force of this comforting truth, 
we must keep in mind that all this loving care is 
taken for creatures of a day, who are here hemmed in 
by simple sense, and who have promise of no to-mor- 
row ; and we must also keep in mind, what science 
has not only conclusively demonstrated, but illumined 
and glorified by its extensive researches, that man is 
a microcosm, the crown of creation, the consummate 
flower of all the ages ; that it was for him this world 
was provided with its mineral deposits, rock quarries, 



02 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

and coal beds, with its vast reservoirs of oil, its dense 
forests and waving grains and grasses, with its flocks 
and herds, with its mighty elemental forces, with its 
flower petals, its arching rainbows, and its painted 

skies. 

It was to secure for him, Nature's sceptered king, 
a fitting environment, that all the mighty processes of 
evolution had been carried on through all the untold 
geologic eons of forgotten time, and it was for him 
earth was fitted up, not as a permanent home, as the 
all-in-all of his existence, but simply as a first year's 
training school for powers which, though barely bud- 
ding now, have in them the promise and the potency 
of an endless life and of a divine likeness. A single 
deathless human soul outweighs in worth ten thou- 
sand worlds of lower sentient life. 

Having described at some length, under the title 
of Science and Christ, the discoveries and conclu- 
sions of science as to man's place in Nature, and 
having no space here for its general discussion, I will 
content myself with the simple statement that the 
more profoundly phenomena have been studied by 
scientists and scientific philosophers, the more clearly 
and gloriously have shone out the truths to which I 
have just alluded ; that God has been busied through 
untold ages in preparing for man's advent, that man 
has been the grand goal of his endeavor, the ultima 
Thule of his creative thought on this planet ; that all 
this prolonged preparation could not have been merely 
to render comfortable a short-lived and low-planed 
animal existence, that this patient approach could not 
have been to a consummation so inconsequential and 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 63 

unworthy, but that he for whom the centuries have 
been so long waiting and to whose coming they have 
been pointing with prophetic finger, who fulfills the 
types, completes the prophecies, wears the crown, 
surely was not born to die ; and that he who has 
proved himself capable of unraveling the intricacies 
and following the vast sweep of the divine thought 
as is evidenced by his discoveries in science, his classi- 
fications of knowledge, his advancement in the arts, 
his rapidly approaching universal mastery and ingen- 
ious utilization of Nature's forces, his unconscious 
duplicating of God's thought-processes as incorpo- 
rated in the lives of the world's silent, instinct-guided 
workers and in the mechanism of their bodies ; he 
who has proved himself capable of so apprehending 
the spirit of God's vast creative plans as to be able to 
become his sub-creator, noticeably multiplying and 
improving the products of vegetable and animal life, 
making the waters swarm, turning deserts into gar- 
dens, developing the crude possibilities of untamed 
Nature ; he whose whole being can thrill with har- 
monies of sound, of form, and of color, and who has 
not only reproduced them but carried them to grand 
exaltations in oratorio and sculptured marble, speak- 
ing canvas, cathedral pile, and landscape gardening, 
and has laid all matter and even all force under tribute 
to his aesthetic tastes ; he who can thus enter with 
keen appreciative zest and assimilative capacity into 
the thought-life of God ; and, finally, he who has had 
intrusted to him, what far transcend everything be- 
side, the responsible gifts of moral discernment and 
liberty of choice, out of which alone character can 



64 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

come, surely must have reached, in point of privilege, 
the very top of being, and must possess in living 
germ the very attributes of God himself, with all 
the golden possibilities of growth in God's eternal 

years. 

"When we thus attempt to measure the worth and 
dignity of man, we must also keep in mind that each 
individual soul comes fresh from the Creator, and is 
not simply the product of processes of evolution be- 
gun in some far age and perpetuated by secondary 
causes which God has long since ceased to superin- 
tend and to whose general outcome alone he has ever 
directed attention. The soul's environment, its body 
and its wider surroundings, is indeed the result of 
such processes, but each soul is in itself a unique 
spiritual entity, bearing the imprint of a distinct 
personal purpose, and constituting the embodiment of 
some cherished ideal, some fond anticipation, some 
sacred love, right out of the very throbbing heart of 

God. 

The drift of the centuries has been to an ever 
more complete development of individuality ; it has 
been a progress from homogeneity to heterogeneity ; 
such has been the history of evolution from the dawn 
of time, as Spencer, Huxley, and thinkers of that 
school have, through learned and brilliant treatises, 
informed the world. 

It is not the great mass as such that excites God's 
loving interest, but the individualized units in it. It 
was not the creating and provisioning of a mighty 
human race simply as such that was the ultima Thule 
of his thought, but the developing of the distinctive 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 6 5 

personal traits of individual souls, and the establishing 
with them at the last, after discipline has done its 
work, intimate and eternal companionship. To think 
that God ever purposed to stop short of this would be 
to belittle his plan, belie the teachings of all sound 
science and philosophy, leave the grand scheme of 
evolution incomplete, and judge of God as being 
coldly self-contained, craving no sympathy, content- 
edly sitting apart in eternal isolation, wholly unre- 
sponsive to the tender pleadings of his children. 

When we discover that God has given his per- 
sonal attention and poured out a wealth of inventive 
thought on every particle of dust, on every minutest 
fiber of every leaflet, on every organ of every infini- 
tesimal creature, we can no longer reasonably with- 
hold our faith in his sympathetic presence with the 
humblest of his human children. And so science 
will eventually forever silence the fear of the self -de- 
preciating, who, in their discouragement, are tempted 
to doubt whether the great God of the universe has 
ever in the vast multiplicity of his affairs particularly 
noticed them, much more kept loving and tireless 
watch over their personal destiny, or ever sought for 
their confidence and the outpouring of their longing 
and their love. 

But science has not only convinced us that we 
have no valid reason for questioning God's sympa- 
thetic presence, but furnished the strongest possible 
grounds for resting our full faith upon it, and making 
it the delight and inspiration of our burdened souls. 
Those grounds it furnished the moment it published 
its discovery that every form of vegetative and ani- 



qq OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

mal life demanded an environment, that it has no re- 
sources in itself for self -maintenance, and that also 
within its reach it invariably" found that on which it 
was fitted to feed. Plants have required soils and 
sunlight and distilling dews, and they have found 
them. Though almost countless the peculiarities of 
need, no species has appeared for which provision has 
not been made awaiting its advent. The seaweed 
found its ocean bed and salted surf ; the cactus, its 
parched sand plain ; the lichen, its rock ; the Edel- 
weiss, its Alpine height ; the gills and fins of fish, 
oceans of water ; the wings and lungs of birds, oceans 
of air. Our eyes have found objects without to be 
painted on their retinae within and artist-sunbeams to 
paint them ; our olfactories, the air loaded with odor- 
ous exhalations ; our nerves of taste, a wide variety of 
flavors to select and enjoy ; our ears, all Nature vocal 
with a grand concert of song. Not only are our 
bodies constituted to touch and take in an environ- 
ment and find one wondrously suited to every need, 
but the same is true of both our intellectual and emo- 
tional capacities. All Nature abounds with suggestive 
thought. It is full of mental stimulant. It is a book 
in which every grade of intellect finds passages of ab- 
sorbing interest and deepest import. Its leaves are 
turned eagerly by prattling children, gray-haired sa- 
vants, matter-of-fact men of affairs, dream-enamored 
poets, and system-building philosophers. Its lore is 
still unexhausted, though the human race for scores 
of centuries has sought to master it. It has depths of 
meaning which human insight has not yet fathomed : 
heights of sublime exaltation to which not even the 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 37 

most spiritually gifted have yet attained. It is full of 
open letters to every son and daughter of earth with 
every sentence penned by a divine hand. Our long- 
ings for intellectual and sympathetic interchange with 
our fellows have been met through literature and arts 
and architecture, through family ties and ever-widen- 
ing social circles. But with this almost infinite pains- 
taking to provide a fitting environment for man, there 
is a want which in all the fullness of God's works 
there is absolutely nothing suited to satisfy. Man in 
his higher nature craves a sympathy which no creature 
can give. Unless these spiritual aspirations and deep 
longings, the sure tokens not only of his divine son- 
ship but of his divine likeness, can find a divine en- 
vironment of companionship, of interchange of thought 
and affection, all that is Godlike within him will lan- 
guish and die and he sink to brute life or below it. 
National and individual history, wherever people have 
self -exiled themselves from the Father, has furnished 
sad cumulative proofs of this. Is it reasonable to sup- 
pose that a plan so wonderful in its elaborate pains- 
taking and masterful achievements, exhibiting such 
seeming exhaustlessness of inventive resource, would 
fail just where a failure must prove so disastrous ? 
Is it reasonable to suppose that God would create man 
with a capacity and a longing for his own sympathetic 
presence — indeed, make that presence necessary to his 
well-being, and then withhold it ; that he would give 
him spiritual lungs on whose respiration of an atmos- 
phere of divine loving recognition his spiritual life 
depended, and then leave him to pant and die in a 
vacuum ? These questions carry with them their own 



OS OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

emphatic denial. To proclaim this grand fact of 
God's sympathetic presence and to embody it in a life 
was the glory of Christ's mission to this sin-cursed and 
sorrow-burdened world. He even sealed it with his 

blood. 

Thus from Nature, philosophy, and the Eevealed 
"Word there comes to this life-giving fact a threefold 
confirmation. 

In our lonely hours, in hours of desperate battling 
with temptation, of bitter bereavement, of perplexed 
and care-cumbered thought, at times when our hearts 
bleed with poignant regret or through unjust accusa- 
tion, when friends on whom we have leaned or in 
whom we have confided the sacred secrets of our inner 
selves have become estranged, through the long days 
of languishment on sick beds, in moments when with 
streaming eyes and trembling lips we bid good-by to 
loved ones, in every hour of need, we are privileged 
to say, as did the Saviour when the dark clouds 
gathered about him, " And yet I am not alone, for the 
Father is with me." 

Out from God's sympathetic presence into the 
chill night of an endless death the incorrigibly wicked 
finally go away. Into it the lovingly obedient come, 
into its welcoming smile, its golden sunlight, its eter- 
nal day. 



IT. 

The question naturally arises, Suppose God can 
interfere, that he actually has, and that he has inter- 
fered for us, can we reasonably believe that he will 
interfere because we ask him, doing for us what other- 
wise he would not have done ? 

In following out the different lines of inquiry 
suggested by this theme, we have found the whole 
earth instinct with the Divine Presence, that which 
ever way we turn we stand face to face with Nature's 
God, witnessing not only finished works replete with 
his thought, but works still being carried on by or- 
ganized and tireless living forces. These forces we 
have found wrapped in such unfathomable mystery, 
working right before our very eyes with such un- 
abated vigor, such wondrous precision, such wisdom, 
such irresistibleness of movement, that we have rec- 
ognized divine thought and divine power in every bit 
of rock crystal, every pendent leaf, every tint of sky 
or painted petal, every liquid note of bird, or restless 
tongue of flame. And it has greatly enhanced our 
pleasure to find that our own minds are so akin to the 
divine that we can trace with clear, interpretive in- 
sight the great trend of God's thoughts through the 

69 



70 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

ages as they have become incarnated one by one ; for 
when, from off that illumined face confronting us 
everywhere, there thus fades that strange far-away 
look and in its stead comes an answering glance of 
recognition and kindly greeting, that face apparently 
draws so near we can all but feel its warm touch upon 
our cheek, look down into the infinite depths of its 
love-lit eyes, and see the parting of its lips as they 
break the long-kept silence with words of benedic- 
tion. 

But it appearing that these forces are derivative 
and delegated, rather than direct acts of divine will, 
we have found that we must take other steps in our 
thinking before we can reach that assurance, for 
which every human heart hungers, of God's still be- 
ing present on this earth and still actively interested 
in it ; for otherwise, what grounds have we for believ- 
ing that these forces were not fully commissioned 
ages ago, and that since then God has gone far into 
the stellar depths to people other planets and never 
once come back again or even given this little globe 
a passing thought % for otherwise, how do we know 
but that the earth is nothing more than a finished 
piece of mechanism, like the watches we carry, and, 
like them, wound up and kept running by the coiled 
energy of some hidden spiral spring ? Happily we 
have discovered that matter and force are of such a 
nature, and so related, that abundant opportunity has 
been afforded, and with apparent design, for the effect- 
ive intervention at any time of direct will power. 
A study of our own experiences has suggested this ; 
for, if we by the might of our own wills have wrought 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 71 

such multitudinous changes on the earth, we can 
readily conceive that the divine will can work by 
analogous methods, and be as much more effective 
as its knowledge transcends the human. It can not, 
as we have found, be reasonably urged that this, 
God's, direct personal interference would be a con- 
fession of flaw in his scheme of evolution, as provision 
for this may have been, and doubtless was, a part of 
that very scheme. He, as we have seen, left many 
of his works incomplete with the evident design that 
man's will should complete them ; and if provision 
was thus made for the after-use of the guiding force of 
the human will, why not for that of the divine ? And 
we are confirmed in this faith when we reflect that 
otherwise God, instead of being an exhaustless foun- 
tain of outflowing, energizing thought, instead of be- 
ing to us the very personification of living force, of 
tireless mental buoyancy and zest, becomes a picture 
of changeless, thoughtless, emotionless calm, of abso- 
lute mental stagnation ; all the vast plans of his whole 
universe of worlds, having been inconceivable ages 
ago, not only determined upon to their minutest de- 
tails, but intrusted for their unfolding to agencies 
fully commissioned and empowered to carry out those 
details to the very letter. Since that time, which lies 
in a past so remote that no finite imagination can con- 
ceive it, he must have been lying with folded hands 
and folded thought and folded feeling, virtually dead 
in the midst of the abounding life which he himself 
created. This conception of the divine existence is 
repellent to every earnest active soul, and there is 
nothing in the discoveries of science to compel such a 



72 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

belief. The perfecting of the intellectual and spirit- 
ual in man must, of course, be God's highest work 
here, and command his chief attention. But he has 
linked the soul indissolubly with matter and cosmic 
force in this world certainly, and also in the next, if 
the Bible disclosures be true; for after death our 
souls, so says the record, will still be clothed upon, 
though the garments be of an imperishable and glori- 
fied texture. So we have no warrant in affirming that 
God has withdrawn his personal oversight and inter- 
ference from any, even the lowest of his kingdoms, 
so long as they are so inseparably intertwined, and 
exercise over each other an influence so vital and last- 
ing. 

The facts of the past as disclosed by science we 
have found to confirm us in this faith, the progres- 
sive changes from a first formless chaos of dead atoms 
to whirling sun clusters and solar systems of organized 
peopled worlds being but the stately steppings of a 
creating God, and testifying to a sleepless watch and 
tireless activity as the ages have one by one rolled by. 
On this revelation of God's mode of existence in the 
past we may safely predicate that of to-day and of 
all coming time. "We can feel assured that his hands 
will never fold in weariness in caring for his own, 
that his eyes will never close in listless inattention to 
their fate, that he will never surrender to delegated 
forces the full conduct of the complex affairs of his 
universe, but will ever be a commanding and direct- 
ing power everywhere present to the uttermost 
bounds of space — just as the vital forces within the 
boundaries of these bodies of ours sway the cosmic, 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 7 g 

only more perfectly ; and as onr spirits, so mysteri- 
ously housed within, order the organs to answer the 
behests of their all-governing wills. 

But having progressed thus far in our attempted 
solution of this most perplexing problem, we find our- 
selves confronted by questions far more formidable 
than any we have yet met. They are questions which 
are sure to intrude whenever there is any thorough 
thinking on this theme. They have proved such 
fruitful sources of doubt in earnestly inquiring minds 
that, instead of being, as they too often are, ignored 
or evaded by the leaders of Christian thought, they 
should be squarely met and fully answered. I re- 
member stating them once at a prayer-meeting pre- 
sided over by my pastor, who was also a college pro- 
fessor ; and, although they were perfectly germane to 
the subject of the evening, and I asked for light and 
needed it, he simply remarked, « There is some intel- 
lectual difficulty in that," and immediately passed to 
other things, and neither in public nor private dis- 
course did he in the slightest manner ever again allude 
to them. This reverend teacher in his evasive indif- 
ference is, I fear, far from being an exceptional case, 
tor it has never been my fortune to have either 
heard from the pulpit or seen in print any attempted 

Grant, says the doubting Thomas, that it is true 
and demonstrable, as claimed, that God can interfere 
that he has interfered and is still interfering, and in- 
terfering every day and hour, in every individual life, 
watching that life with loving interest and with unre- 
mitting care, still what proof is there in all this that 



74 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

prayer has in a single instance effected any change in 
the plans which God had formed before the prayer 
was nttered ? Has any prayer given God any new 
information as to the needs of any petitioner ; or rather, 
has not God had from the first an infinitely fuller 
and more accurate knowledge of the entire life-neces- 
sities of every soul than the soul itself can ever pos- 
sibly have, with its imperfect finite faculties and 
meaner experience ? Is it not absurd to imagine that 
we can in any way instruct Jehovah ? Do not our 
prayers appear to him who knows our real needs but 
utterances of wildest absurdities ? But suppose they 
do sometimes actually voice our real wants, have not 
those wants already been known to God and definitely 
provided for by him V Has he not been busy for ages 
fitting up this world for us ? Are not those instances 
of his direct interference which are insisted on as hav- 
ing actually occurred, and as still occurring, as much 
parts of this original plan as the formation of a crystal 
or the growth of a tree ? Has he not thought out to 
the minutest detail just what to do and how to do it ? 
Are the forces at work in the world, and their com- 
binations, so complex that exigencies are constantly 
arising which escaped God's foreknowledge or for 
which he failed to provide ? Does science or revela- 
tion afiord us any warrant in thus limiting God's wis- 
dom or questioning the perfection of his works ? If 
God thus thought out deliberately and fully his vast 
plans before he uttered his first creative fiat, and had 
as his guide a perfect and all-comprehending fore- 
knowledge, think you his will has since become so 
vacillating that he can be cajoled against his best 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 75 

judgment,, or that more kindly feelings can be en- 
kindled within him, by the blind, passionate pleadings 
of creatures of his own make, and whose lives are yet 
but in the bud ? 

The only reply I have ever heard given leaves the 
difficulties just where it found them. It is this : that 
the prayers of God's people have been all foreknown 
to him, and their answers provided for, uncomputed 
ages before they were uttered ; that they entered into 
God's thought when he formed his original plan, and 
were made to constitute an integral part of it. This 
reply is so plausible and has given such general satis- 
faction that it may be regarded as the accepted creed 
of Christendom. 

Suppose this were true, that God has both fore- 
known all prayers and made ample provision for each 
as each deserves, would not the difficulties just uro-ed 
still remain ? For if the prayer of a righteous man 
availeth much, as the Scriptures teach, and if it has 
influence with God, as Christians believe, what mat- 
ters it, so far as these objections lie, whether that 
influence is exerted now or was exerted years ago % 
For, according to the supposition, prayer has actually 
wrought a change in the divine purpose just the same, 
only at an earlier date ; and it is just as' truly an em- 
bodiment of the blind longings of a finite being ad- 
dressed to an infinite God; and the fact of the 
prayer's availing— which must mean, if it means any- 
thing, that it actually effects a change in God's plan 
at the time its influence is felt— witnesses just as 
pointedly against the perfection of God's plan, since 
it existed before the change was wrought, and against 



76 



OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 



the stability of his purpose, whether that change occurs 
now or took place before the chaotic fire-mist was 
rolled into suns. But, say you, how, then, can the 
objection be answered % Only in this one way— by 
denying the doubter's major premise, that God's 
foreknowledge is all-comprehending. The denial of 
this, I believe, can be shown to be in perfect conso- 
nance both with sound philosophy and the Kevealed 
"Word when once that "Word is rightly understood. 
Let us then examine this denial, first, from a philo- 
sophical standpoint, from the standpoint of the science 

of metaphysics. 

If God foreknows everything that will ever come 
to pass, all his own mental states must necessarily be 
included in that foreknowledge. His eternal past and 
eternal future must be to him an eternal now. This 
is axiomatic. A moment's reflection will convince ^ us 
that otherwise there is not a single present intention 
or plan but what is exposed to the possibility of modi- 
fication. If a single thought or emotion is ever going 
to spring up in God's mind unanticipated, coming in as 
a complete surprise, God himself must be as ignorant 
as we as to what part of his vast plans it will pertain, 
or what will be its relative importance, or what the 
radius or duration of its influence. Indeed, both 
radius and duration must be absolutely infinite ; for, 
however minute the influence or modification, it must 
result in others, and those in others still— the circle 
widening thus without end ; for the parts of God's 
plan are supposed to be intimately interlinked, com- 
plemental, so precisely fitted part to part that the 
effect of each is felt throughout the whole, like the 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 77 

intricate complications of a piece of mechanism. And 
if one thought or emotion may thus spring into being 
unanticipated, be absolutely original, why not ten or 
ten thousand ? Indeed, what limit can be placed on 
their number or on their modifying power ? And so 
if we would logically defend a belief in the all-com- 
prehensiveness of God's foreknowledge, we must affirm 

that not a single new idea can arise in his mind not 

a single new emotion be felt, and that if he is thus 
limited now he must have been equally so at every 
moment in all the eternal past, and must be through 
all the years to come ; for if there ever has been, or 
ever will be, a moment when a new thought can thus 
come, then during all the time preceding that moment 
the foreknowledge was incomplete. Where does this 
lead us ? What sort of an intellectual or emotional 
. condition does this irrefragable logic compel us to as- 
sert God to be continually in ? Unquestionably that 
of perfect stagnation. No thought processes can be 
carried on under such conditions— no succession of 
ideas, no change of mental state ; but God must have 
been, and must still be, imprisoned in a hopelessly 
dead calm. 

When, then, did he form his plans for creation ? 
Under this supposition there never could have been a 
time when he began to think about them, nor a period 
during which he adjusted their different parts, each 
to each, in that perfection of harmony which so 
astounds us, for that would involve thought-succes- 
sion. We are not at liberty under this supposition to 
affirm even that the entire plan in all its details flashed 
instantly upon him, for this would impeach the per- 



78 OLD FAITHS AND KBW FACTS. 

f ection of his foreknowledge up to the instant of such 
innooding of thought, but must content ourselves with 
asserting that it has existed in his mind from all eternity 
as one of its constituent elements. If God has had 
no thought-succession, he can have had no feeling, his 
emotional state having ever necessarily been that of 
unbroken placidity— of absolute apathy, his heart 
throbless as stone. He could experience no change of 
feeling, for that would involve thought-succession. 
From all the sources of joy or sorrow of which we 
can conceive he would be utterly debarred— from 
pleasurable or painful memories, from hopes and fore- 
bodings, from social sympathies, from emotions that 
accompany changes, contrasts, surprises, from the 
glow of activity, even from the delights and griefs of 
contemplation; for they all involve thought-move- 
ment. Therefore under this supposition God can 
have no emotional activity, for he would have no 
thought-activity for its background. Thoughts must 
course, must come and go, or the heart lies dead. 

Such are the absurdities in which we become 
hopelessly entangled the moment we attempt to de- 
fend the doctrine of God's perfect foreknowledge. 
And besides, on further reflection, we will discover 
that it is, after all, utterly impossible, from the- very 
nature of the case, for God to foreknow all his own 
future. The very fact that he is a sovereign spirit 
precludes this. It is equally impossible, and for the 
same reason, for him to know what our future will be. 
He has made us equally with himself of sovereign 
will, and placed upon us all the responsibilities of that 
sovereignty. When he thus created us in his own 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 79 

image he,_by that very act, surrendered a part both 
of his power and of his foreknowledge. He has left 
it possible for us, despite all the influences he can 
bring to bear, to rebel against his throne and persist 
in that rebellion. He, in thus constituting us the 
arbiters of our destinies, necessarily circumscribed his 
own power. There was no other course open to him. 
We must be free, must be sovereign, if we become 
morally accountable, and ever reach up out of a state 
of simple innocency to that of divine virtue. And 
God when he thus surrendered absolute control, also 
of necessity limited his foreknowledge, for our own 
self -study reveals that our perfect freedom of choice 
is inseparably linked with uncertainty as to what that 
choice will be. Character can be evolved only out of 
struggle. Virtues are the names of victories won 
over temptations ; and where temptations environ a 
sovereign will, there must be risks, a certain degree of 
uncertainty. It can not be otherwise. We can not 
exercise this sovereignty or know that we have it, un- 
less there are open to us two or more courses from 
which to choose, and our fidelity to principle or the 
depth of our self-sacrificing affection can not be de- 
veloped or brought to test except by genuine wage of 
battle. And how can it be certainly known whether 
this shall issue in defeat or be made glorious by 
decisive victory? From the very nature of things 
complete foreknowledge is precluded, for we can go 
in the direction of either the weaker or the stronger 
motive. But, say you, perhaps we have the power 
thus to go, but in point of fact we never do, for the 
motive that controls us proves itself the stronger in 



80 



OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 



that we invariably yield to it. This is too wide a 
conclusion for the premises. Our yielding does not 
prove it the stronger intrinsically, but simply rela- 
tively, and then only because we make it so through 
our choosing to direct and hold the current of our 
thoughts in that direction until the chosen object of 
contemplation acquires prominence and power. We 
can not stop the flow of thought, but can change its 
direction. And even God himself can not with un- 
erring certainty predict what that change will be, for 
it is purely an act of sovereignty. If, hi fact, we 
never go in the direction of the weaker motive, how 
do we know we can ? "Would not this unbroken 
regularity prove the presence of inexorable law? 
The testimony of our inner consciousness that we 
could do differently would, under such circumstances, 
never come to proof. And yet only where strict 
regularity prevails can the necessary data be obtained 
for perfect foreknowledge. Outside this circle of 
responsible sovereignty, under the reign of absolu- 
tism, of immutable order, within which the physical 
and vital forces and the pure animal instincts work 
their wonders, God can of course predict with un- 
erring certainty, and to the minutest detail ; for the 
plan is all his own, and from it there is not the 
slightest deviation, nor can there be. Courses here 
are predetermined and as exact as mathematical for- 
mulas. God, who fixed the conditions, who founded 
the laws, must know the issue. But in the region of 
delegated sovereignty, of absolute freedom of choice, 
of moral accountability, uncertainty just as necessarily 
enters in and renders prediction impossible. 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 81 

If what I have argued be true, we need no longer 
struggle with those hopeless tasks of harmonizing 
foreordination with free will, and of explaining how 
a beneficent God could bring into being souls which 
he at that very time positively knew would be eter- 
nally lost. 

The doctrine of God's perfect foreknowledge is 
not only unphilosophical, but also unscriptural. The 
Bible exhorts us to the deepest earnestness in prayer 
— to downright importunity — and encourages us to 
believe that the fervent prayer of the righteous man 
availeth much. No petitioner can plead with any 
genuine unction unless he believes that he can actu- 
ally effect some change in the purposes existing in 
the divine mind at the time his prayer is offered. If 
he were convinced that everything had been pre- 
arranged from all eternity ; that his tears and sighs 
and passionate words of longing had been present in 
God's mind always ; that they never had exerted, and 
never could exert, any influence, effect any change, 
as there could never be a time when they would first 
arrest God's attention — how could he wrestle, ago- 
nize, in prayer ? It would seem but empty show to 
him, that he was merely playing a part. Every word 
he uttered would fall back dead. If he believes in 
God's foreknowledge, he must, while he prays, if he 
prays as the Bible commands, utterly forget his belief 
and fall into the temporary delusion that the matter is 
yet undetermined, that God's heart is tender, can be 
moved, that his purposes can be changed. He must 
forget his belief, must go ahead just as if foreknowl- 
edge were not true. Think you God would force his 



82 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

children to such straits, to such mental stultification ? 
The thought is repellent. Eead if you will the ninth 
chapter of Deuteronomy. Moses here rehearses the 
several rebellions of Israel, and his three separate 
pleadings before the Lord, of forty days and forty 
nights each, without either eating bread or drinking 
water. Each time he fell down before a very angry 
God who had fully purposed, and had definitely an- 
nounced his purpose, to destroy the rebels, and each 
time, if Moses can be credited, he actually changed 
that purpose right then and there and rescued his 
people. The God here depicted had none of that 
foreknowledge which theologians with such strange 
unanimity ascribe to him. But, say you, that and 
similar accounts scattered throughout the Bible are 
simply instances of anthropomorphism, of rhetorical 
accommodation, of 'describing in the language of 
human experiences and human limitations what really 
transcends the human ; that it was not the intent to 
have these narrations interpreted as literal history, 
but as poetic approximations or dim shadowings of 
really ineffable truths. It seems to me that it would 
be a strange way to bring the truth within our compre- 
hension, to state what is directly opposed to the truth, 
and to reiterate the downright falsehood, again and 
again, in a most misleading way, and in a matter of 
such vital moment that all possibility of religious life 
depends on it, and through which alone any lasting 
comfort comes to the hungry human soul. Could 
Moses have thought that what he was so importu- 
nately pleading for had actually been determined upon 
millions of ages before, and that the picture of his 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. g 3 

prostrate form, Ms streaming eyes, his starving body, 
his passion-swayed soul, had been lying in the divine 
mind from all eternity ? He unquestionably believed 
directly the opposite, and the narration was designed 
to teach us that directly the opposite was true. 

Think you that Christ during that long night of 
agony in Gethsemane, when he cried out over and 
over again, while great drops of blood stood on his 
brow, " If it be possible, let this cup pass from me," 
knew all the time that there was but one way in 
which the race could be rescued, that precisely this 
one had been predetermined to its minutest detail, 
and that all that was left for him was to carry it out 
to the bitter end ? Were not those the agonized ut- 
terings of a faithful yet shrinking human soul— for 
Christ was human as well as divine — poured out 
before a supposed loving and sympathetic Father? 
And have we not a right to believe that they not only 
deepened God's sympathy, but actually influenced 
him to again reconsider the whole subject, that hap- 
pily he might discover some escape for his Son from 
the impending doom ? When Christ prayed, he un- 
questionably meant the same as if he had directly 
said, "Father, do think it over again, and see if 
it be possible, and if it is, let the cup pass," for the 
petition is pointless unless this thought is em- 
bodied in it. Christ had not yet for an instant har- 
bored the thought of relinquishing the enterprise or 
even imperiling it by any attempt at self-rescue. 
He did not even ask for sustaining grace. All he 
pleaded for was another more searching inquiry to see 
if some different means of rescue could not be de- 



84 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

vised. He simply desired to avoid needless humilia- 
tion and pain. In what a pitiable farce he must have 
consented to become an actor during the watches of 
that memorable night, if he positively knew all the 
time that there was no other way possible ! And if 
he did not thus know, but God did— and that too 
from all eternity, even to the precise mode and to its 
every detail— and had unalterably determined upon 
its being carried out to the very letter, with what 
cold, relentless cruelty this Father must have listened, 
hour after hour, to that sorrow-stricken Son as he 
pleaded in heart-rending agony for him to see if there 
were not some other equally effective way to save the 
lost ! How could he listen to that pleading, wailed 
out on the night air, for something he had not the 
faintest idea of granting ? Why did he not encircle 
him in the arms of his everlasting love and at once 
explain the impossibility of change, if he certainly 
knew that no change was possible ? What importu- 
nate pleading! No parallel can be found in all 
human history. Was it for naught ? Was it a stu- 
pendous blunder born of ignorance? We can not 
mistake it for some blind outcry of a sinking soul. 
Should we not seek for some sane, sensible purpose 
in the plea ? We have here revealed not simply one 
of the disciplinary seasons in Christ's career, his 
desperate battling with the tempter, for he had be- 
trayed no weakness, no unwillingness to face, if need 
be, any fate however terrible. He showed from first 
to last a spirit of perfect submission, for note how 
carefully he coupled with his passionate prayer, " Not 
as I will, but as thou wilt." Nothing could be added 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. g 5 

to his consecration. His self -surrender stood com- 
plete. His soul was white as the light that beats on 
God's throne. But how natural, and necessary, and 
full of deepest significance, appears this whole scene 
in this, earth's darkest tragedy, the moment we con- 
ceive that Christ, instead of being crazed by his 
grief, was quickened by it to clearer spiritual insight ; 
that in his cry, " O my Father, if it be possible, let 
this cup pass from me," the real plea was that the 
whole subject-matter of modes of rescue should be 
reopened and again most searchingly reviewed ; that 
God fully answered that prayer by a long, deep study ; 
and that, when the last faint ray of hope went out in 
night, he, in accents tender as an infinite pity could 
make them, told Christ all ; and then the Saviour, 
satisfied, rose from his knees, wiped away the blood- 
stains of his agony, and with a calm, majestic bearing, 
that never again left him, save in the last throes of 
dissolution, said to his disciples : " Eise up, let us go ; 
lo ! he that betrayeth me is at hand." 

Had I time, and were it necessary, I might mul- 
tiply indefinitely citations from Scripture of cases in 
which it is clearly taught that even to God's eye the 
future is not wholly uncurtained— that he carries 
on processes of thought as we do, elaborates plans, 
modifies them and sometimes even abandons them 
altogether to meet the demands of unforeseen exi- 
gencies as they arise, that he interferes in behalf of 
his children and because they ask him, actually form- 
ing and executing entirely new, unpremeditated pur- 
poses in response to their asking. 

Against this view, that we actually exert an influ- 



86 



OLD FA1TIIS AND NEW FACTS. 



ence over the divine mind, it has been urged, as I have 
already remarked, that it implies imperfection in the 
divine adjustments, and vacillation in the divine will, 
that it is the very height of presumption in ns to sup- 
pose that we can influence the great God of the uni- 
verse to do differently from what he had in his wis- 
dom deliberately planned. The usual reply— that 
God has from the first foreknown all prayers and 
carefully incorporated his answers into his original 
designs— is, as I have endeavored to point out, fatally 
lacking both in sound philosophy and in Scripture 
support. How, then, can the objection be met ? In 
the first place, God has, as I have explained, left his 
works in such plastic state that he can whenever 
he chooses interfere by direct will-power without oc- 
casioning any disorder. If so, what can be urged 
against the belief that he left them thus with the ex- 
press design of introducing from time to time such 
modifications as circumstances should require? In- 
deed, what other explanation can be given than this 
for the presence of this universal characteristic? 
This, instead of betraying a weakness, a flaw, in 
God's plans, reveals its strength and finish. So far 
as it was possible for him to perfectly foreknow, so 
far the conditions of change and activity have been 
unalterably fixed, as in the operation of chemic, vital, 
and instinct forces. But realizing that in delegating 
to his human offspring the responsible power of free 
choice he would necessarily let in the element of un- 
certainty, thus obscuring his prophetic vision, he with 
most profound wisdom contrived through this very 
plasticity in Nature to be able to meet any emergency 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 87 

that might arise, to leave every avenue free, every 
particle of matter and every form of force promptly 
responsive to his call. His plans in such a case, in- 
stead of being ill advised and marred with faults, are 
simply unperfected and in constant process of com- 
pletion. He is thus afforded ample opportunity to 
enjoy unceasing mental activity, and with sleepless 
eye and tireless hand to be ever caring for his own. 
To me this conception of God is by far the most ex- 
alted and stimulating. Instead of an idle spectator 
walled out of his own universe, he becomes an intense 
participant of effective personal presence, a living, 
loving spirit, free and masterful, the embodiment of 
all the active virtues and throbbing sympathies that 
are the necessary heroic belongings of him who 
would win the affectionate reverence of human 
hearts. 

G-od being able to forecast the general trend, the 
ordinary tendencies, of the lives of his children, has 
unquestionably prearranged his providences to meet 
their probable wants, has provided for them a boun- 
tiful environment full of illimitable possibilities of 
joy and growth. For the extraordinary and unfore- 
seen he has made provision by leaving himself ample 
facilities for immediate interference. And then, too, 
by timely suggestions he may, and often does, make 
us willing and intelligent servitors of his will, inaugu- 
rating by a single whispered thought, in moments of 
crisis, movements of deep and lasting import in our 
own or others' destiny. 

Thoroughly conversant, as he must be, with all 
the peculiar mental states of every individual as fast 



88 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

as they arise, his seed-thoughts fall opportunely into 
responsive soils and soon quicken into harvests. A 
word dropped into the mind of a young Luther starts 
a Eef ormation that shakes to its very center the papal 
throne of the world. As Carlyle says, " The clock 
strikes when there is a change from hour to hour, but 
there is no hammer in the horologe of time to peal 
through the universe when there is a change from 
era to era." God notes those pivotal periods and uses 
them. 

Any human will obstinately standing in the way 
of the great ongoings of his providence, as it certainly 
can as long as it is free, he reserves the power of 
either temporarily or permanently placing under 
duress. Of course, while thus borne down by a 
superior personality, while deprived of its freedom of 
choice, it is relieved of responsibility, its acts lose 
their moral quality, and it becomes like any other 
force in Nature. It is, however, responsible for ne- 
cessitating such summary procedure. This divine im- 
pressment, this infringement upon our freedom, may, 
for aught we know, be frequently resorted to in the 
course of individual or national history. We certainly 
are the arbiters of our destinies. But woe betide him 
who recklessly dashes against the thick bosses of Jeho- 
vah's buckler ! We are closely hedged in by carefully 
constructed systems of inexorable law. We can break 
those laws if we choose, but we do it at our peril. 
"We can stand out persistently against all God's good 
influences ; we may render futile his utmost efforts to 
rescue us from the thraldom of sin. The whole race 
may combine successfully to thwart his purposes of 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 89 

love. From the very nature of the case he was 
forced to incur that risk, for virtue can live only in an 
atmosphere of liberty. But we must remember that 
God's unalterable determination from the beginning 
has been not to make everybody loyal and loving, but 
simply to furnish the possibilities for loyalty and 
love, and then do all in his power consistent with the 
conditions precedent to character-forming to develop 
within each soul the germs of divinity of his own 
hand's planting. He may be forced to summon a 
deluge, or an earthquake, or some wasting pestilence 
to do his terrible bidding ; he may be forced to 
abandon what after trial prove ineffectual methods, 
and adopt new ones ; he may be forced to recall the 
gift of liberty, or the very gift of existence here and 
hereafter from those who persistently repel all 
proffers and become hopelessly hardened; but his 
loving purpose still holds out, his laws still stand, the 
golden opportunities are still presented, each century 
witnesses some new conquests of love, some souls 
added to heaven's company, the great scheme is 
steadily going forward to its final glorious consum- 
mation. 

Such a view of God — of his maturing and execut- 
ing plans, of his intellectual and emotional life — as I 
have endeavored to present, is the only one, after all, 
actually conceivable by finite minds. To pronounce 
him unconditioned, unchangeable, omniscient, omnip- 
otent, omnipresent, using these words in their ordi- 
nary and fullest acceptation, placing no restriction 
upon their meaning, is simply falling, unintentionally 
no doubt, into nothing less than word jugglery, af- 



90 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

firming what to human minds must of necessity be 
absolutely unthinkable. The only rational course is 
to take for our basic thought that we have been 
created in God's image, and then to picture God as a 
spirit possessing in perfection attributes analogous to 
our own, although these are yet germinal and sin- 
distorted. 

I am now ready to answer the question, How can 
we reasonably hope by our petitions to effect a change 
in the divine purposes, and why should we plead im- 
portunately, why kindle our souls into such intensity 
of fervor ? The Scriptures in enjoining earnestness 
need not be understood as favoring attempts to coax 
and tease God, as we too frequently do our earthly 
parents, to act against his better judgment out of 
some weak, short-sighted sympathy. If that be our 
purpose, we may be certain of flat failure. Our 
prayers will never induce him to deal any more gen- 
erously with us. He has always stood with out- 
stretched arms, with overflowing sympathy, waiting 
impatiently to bless us. What untold wealth of deep 
inventive thought, what untold aeons of slowly pass- 
ing years, he has already lavished in his preparations 
for our coming, for our maintenance, for our unfold- 
ing, for our permanent weal ! While our prayers will 
not make him any more kindly disposed, will not 
noticeably increase his sympathy for us, they will in 
most marked measure increase his sympathy with us, 
will profoundly change our attitude toward him and 
multiply our capacity for blessing ten thousand fold. 
Indeed, so radical is the change wrought, that what 
would have been poison before, becomes medicine 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 91 

now. We thus furnish God new facts upon which 
to act — facts of mental attitude, the unforeseen out- 
puts of our sovereignty. That attitude is one of 
Christlike love, manifesting itself in five forms — 
that of willing obedience, of self-sacrificing service, 
of sense of divine dependence, of restful confidence, 
and of intensest longing. Until that attitude is at- 
tained in all these its prime essentials, God, if he 
should interfere by stepping outside his general prov- 
idence, in which the evil and the good are served 
alike, to confer special favors, would be doing vio- 
lence to his conceptions of fitness and of true benefi- 
cence, would work his children a most positive injury, 
placing a premium on qualities that stand over against 
these forms of love, thereby countenancing a spirit 
of rebellion, selfishness, self-sufficiency, distrust, and 
ignoble apathy. It is the fervent prayer of the 
righteous man that availeth much. He must be 
righteous and his righteousness must be on fire to 
fulfill the Scripture conditions. That availing power 
is something more than retroactive; it moves the 
arm that moves the world. As this is a moral state 
of the soul within the circle of its sovereignty, the 
product of its absolutely free choice, there can not 
be, as I have shown, any sure prophecy of its coming. 
But when it comes, all barriers are burned away. Ee- 
serve gives place to closest sympathetic intimacy. 
What more natural, when the spirits of father and 
son thus meet and mingle, than that the son, care- 
cumbered it may be, or broken with grief, or baffled 
in purpose, though battling still, should pour out in 
most impassioned utterance his deep and noble long- 
7 



92 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

ings ? Love itself would so prompt ; for love casteth 
out fear, is the very essence of liberty. Cautious 
reserve can not live in its atmosphere of holy confi- 
dence. All curtains of concealment fall instantly at 
the magic touch of sympathy. He could not keep 
his longings back. His father's tender look and tone 
would break the seals of silence, would touch his lips 
with coals of fire. The thought of trying by coaxing 
to melt down his stern reluctance is utterly foreign to 
such a scene, repugnant to such a state, and was never 
contemplated in the gospel. What more natural than 
that God's heart should be deeply stirred by the 
fervid outflow of such a passion of love and longing, 
and that he should by direct will-power supply the 
deficiencies of his general providence, or by timely 
suggestions reveal its resources, and place them in 
reach to meet the needs of such a soul in such an 
hour ? 

These views are not only thus in deep accord with 
the principles of sound philosophy and the revelations 
of modern science, but also with the prof oundest in- 
tuitions of human hearts ; for when once our sense of 
world-dependence and of self-sufficiency is rudely 
swept away by some disaster, and Ave come intently 
to long for what we find we can not reach without 
God's help, how soon we brush aside all hindering 
creeds, and in dead earnest plead our case, and plead 
believing that the heart and arm of God will answer 
to our plea ! But in this intensely materialistic and 
scientific age there have so insidiously settled about 
our thought the bewildering fogs of learned and sub- 
tile sophistries breathed out by those who would 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 93 

either relegate God altogether from his universe or 
make his relations quite inconsequential and remote, 
that only in the distressing stress of crises in our his- 
tory do our long-neglected religious intuitions assume 
their rightful sovereignty, and restore us to our true 
relations with Him who in his great love never 
wearies in caring for his own. But may we not hope 
that the night is well-nigh spent, that the fogs are 
lifting, that a new day dawns — a day of deeper, clearer, 
truer thought, of more perfect knowledge, of more 
enlightened faith, and a faith whose kindly light will 
prove the sure harbinger of God's perfect day ? 



y. 



There is left for me now but one other general 
affirmation to make. With its explanation and proof 
I believe I shall have presented the subject in all its 
essential phases. Jt is this : Every reasonable prayer 
offered in a right spirit is certain of favorable answer. 
This is the clear import of Christ's comprehensive 
promise to his disciples, as recorded in Matthew, 
" All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believ- 
ing, ye shall receive," or as Mark states it, " Whatso- 
ever things ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye 
receive them, and ye shall have them." If we in- 
terpret these passages in the light of the context and 
of the general trend of Christ's teachings, we can not 
but conclude that Christ premised in his promise that 
the prayers should be reasonable and that they should 
be offered in the right spirit. ~No petitioner who 
complies with these two conditions need ever fear 
failure. 

To have our prayers reasonable, we should, in the 
first place, guard against asking for anything which 
we can procure by our own exertions, making use of 
the resources of physical and mental strength, of 
social ties and general surroundings already in reach. 

94 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 95 

God is a strict economist. If he has already made 
ample provisions in his general providence, and if we 
ourselves can by proper industry discover and utilize 
this provision, we ought not to expect from him any 
further help by special act. We must exhaust our 
own means first, and ask him simply to supplement 
our weakness and insufficiency. Otherwise we would 
be asking not only for what God has really already 
bestowed — and bestowed in a way which he thought 
would do us the greatest and most lasting good — but 
for what, if granted again in this more direct manner, 
would prove to us a positive bane, and not a blessing ; 
and if such a course were continued, all incentive to 
industry and enterprise would thus be taken away, 
physical and mental sloth would succeed to healthful, 
growth-promoting activity, abject timidity and feel- 
ing of dependence would take the place of a manly 
spirit of self-reliance. No wise parent among us, 
however keen and quick his sympathies, would ever 
consent thus to shield his child from toil and care and 
battle-test, for he knows he would by dandling him 
thus in the lap of ease and luxury, be sure to unman 
him, weaken his body and invite disease, dull the 
edge of his faculties and rob him of every prospect 
of progress, of every trace of nobility, of everything 
that gives zest and incentive and joy to life and gilds 
the future with its pencillings of glory. Wise teachers 
refrain from helping their pupils so long as they can 
help themselves. Their office is not to relieve but 
to incite, not dwarf but draw out, not convert those 
under their charge into cowering weaklings but into 
athletes and conquerors. Even the eagle, prompted 



96 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

by a divine wisdom, will push her timid fledglings 
out from their lofty eyrie home, and watch them 
flutter and hear their cry of distress as they disappear 
down the sides of the gorges, keeping herself, how- 
ever, meantime, in ready reach, and now and then 
darting under to save them from fatal fall, for God 
has taught this mother thus to throw her children on 
their own resources, that they may feel their wings 
and learn to use them. This is a rude awakening. 
It seems a cruel banishment. But otherwise they 
would never learn to poise and wheel in air, to dart 
like thunderbolts, to breast the hurricane, or to climb 
the steep stairways of the sky. 

God loves us too wisely and too well to heed any 
of our cries except in times of positive and pressing 
need. He will let us struggle alone until our strength 
and judgment fail. He will, however, always keep in 
call, and will in deepest sympathy watch the contest 
point by point, and we can rest assured that in the 
hour of our extremity, should such hour come, we 
shall be made gladly conscious of some answering 
heart-beat, shall hear some whispered word, shall feel 
the uplifting power of some helping hand of love. A 
prayer for God to convert our impenitent friends 
would be unreasonable if without conditions or pro- 
visos, as it might be utterly impossible for him to 
secure such a result. All we can sensibly ask for is 
that he will make use of all the instrumentalities at 
his command, arrest the attention, rouse the con- 
science, reveal the danger of delay, the consequences 
of continued rebellion as well as of loving obedience — 
in a word, bring to bear all the persuasive influences 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 97 

possible and still leave their wills untrammeled, for 
without absolute freedom of choice being constantly 
maintained, no moral change can possibly be wrought. 
Again, our prayers to be reasonable must be con- 
sistent in all their parts, must be free from contradic- 
tory requests. To answer discordant prayers in their 
entirety would be impossible even to God. To illus- 
trate : It would be inconsistent for us to ask only for 
the agreeable things of this life— for freedom from 
care, sorrow, and pain, from disappointment, priva- 
tion, calumny, from all the vexations, perplexities, and 
disasters of life— and at the same time that he would 
develop in us that glorious Christlikeness for which 
in our nobler inspired moments we so intently long. 
As well ask for the knit sinews of an athlete, while 
nestling in undisturbed repose in the padded sleepy 
hollows of a rocking chair. The ignoble fate of a soul 
set free from life's carking care and environed with all 
that the most cultured civilization could suggest Ten- 
nyson in his Palace of Art has pictured with a mas- 
ter hand. If we would be like Christ, we must pass 
through Christ's school of experience. He needed 
the discipline of suffering and struggle as well as 
we. He began where we begin— in perfect inno- 
cency yet characterless, possessing simply the possi- 
bilities of virtue totally undeveloped. It is because 
he afterward became a hero, battle-taught, battle- 
tested, battle-scarred, and yet never knew defeat ; it 
is because he through faith wrought righteousness, 
out of weakness was made strong, endured the cross' 
despising the shame, suffered long and was kind, 
sought not his own, was not easily provoked, thought 



98 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

no evil, rejoiced not in iniquity but rejoiced in the 
truth, bore all things, believed all things, endured all 
things, loved us with a love that never failed and 
loved us to the end — it is because of this, Christ has 
stood before the ages, and will stand, as the Peerless 
One, the Eevelator of the Divine Heart, the Libera- 
tor and Saviour of mankind, the Prince of Peace. We 
must bear Christ's cross, would we wear his crown. 

We fall into these contradictions in our prayers 
through a total misconception of the design of this 
life. Evolution, not unalloyed present pleasure, is the 
purpose now. We have been housed in perishable 
bodies full of quivering nerves ; have been environed 
with antagonistic forces that threaten and thwart us 
at every turn ; our paths have been left rough, and 
full of dangerous pitfalls ; poisons pervade much of 
the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we 
take to repair these weak clay tenements. To millions 
life is a heavy care-burden, a fierce contest, and how 
frequently is it one long catastrophe, made up of 
broken hopes and baffled purposes, of weariness and 
scalding tears and sighs for rest ! Why is it ? Is this 
life a stupendous failure ? If there is no beyond for 
which it is preparing, it most certainly is. Could not 
God have shielded his children from suffering and 
strufic<>:le? Yes: but not without hopelessly exclud- 
ing them from all prospect of spiritual progress, leav- 
ing them forever on the low plane of ignoble, irre- 
sponsible brute life. The error is widely prevalent 
that God has by some arbitrary decision established 
the great underlying principles that determine moral 
character, and can at will change the conditions of 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 99 

spiritual growth. No more mischievous confusion of 
thought can possibly be entertained. These principles 
and conditions must reach back infinitely, can of neces- 
sity have had no beginning, and can not be susceptible 
of the slightest change; for otherwise before their 
establishment God could not have been possessed of 
any moral attribute, or have had for his own govern- 
ance any standard of moral life. He can not change 
them or set them aside, for a moment's reflection will 
disclose that not even he can convert selfishness into a 
virtue, or place heartless cruelty on a par with a spirit 
of self -forgetting love. 

What he has done for us in this regard is to give 
power of free choice, and capacity for moral discern- 
ment, and to place us in moral relations with himself 
and with our fellows, and to establish us amid such 
surroundings as are fitted by their disciplinary pro- 
cesses to develop into glorious fact what are at the 
first but bare possibilities of virtue. We may, if we 
choose, stand true to these eternal principles of obli- 
gation, live in loving harmony with these many-sided 
relationships of life, and thereby grow into divine like- 
ness, or we may persistently refuse to conform, and 
shut against our souls forever this only open door to 
hope, miss forever this only opportunity to win eternal 
life. Simply these possibilities are or can be of divine 
gift. Virtues God can not bestow : they must be born 
of battle. Dark as were Christ's forebodings of the 
coming afflictions of his disciples, deeply as he longed 
to save them from the imprisonments and scourgings 
and cruel deaths which awaited them, he, in that last 
prayer so memorable for its deep, pathetic tenderness, 



100 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

prayed not that his Father would take them out of the 
world and save them from its sufferings and from its 
spiritual exposures, hut only that he would keep them 
from the evil, from heing finally overmastered and 
borne down by the terrible power of the tempter. 
God could not save even his Son, his best beloved. 
He could by his creative word speak a universe into 
being, but he could not set aside or render less exact- 
ing a single one of the laws of spiritual unfolding, 
even for Christ himself, though through those long 
night-watches in Gethsemane his shrinking human 
soul pleaded for relief with an agony so intense as to 
cause his body to sweat great drops of blood. Christ, 
with his human limitations of knowledge, seemed to 
hope that God might in some way avert the impend- 
ing doom and still accomplish the objects of his mis- 
sion, and so he prayed, " Father, if it be possible, let 
this cup pass from me." Yet while God could not 
save him from that hour, he no doubt whispered words 
of comfort, gave assurances of his deep-felt sympathy, 
promised his loving presence and sustaining grace 
through it all, and, once his mission ended, a glad and 
honored welcome to the skies. 

"What God did for Christ and for his disciples he 
will do for us, and for this we may most confidently 
pray, that he will not suffer us to be tempted above 
that we are able to bear, but will with the temptation 
provide some way of escape, some way to glorious and 
final victory. His purpose is to supplement, not sup- 
plant. He will send angels to minister, will grant 
moments of respite, and glimpses of glory. 

Our prayers must thus not only be reasonable, 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. iqi 

but they must also be offered in the right spirit. The 
want must be deeply felt, and there must be a whole- 
souled earnestness in the plea, accompanied with a 
willingness to make any exertion, and undergo any 
sacrifice, for the attainment of the end. Until this be 
our attitude, we are not yet worthy of the help, are 
not in the mood to appreciate it, and have not the 
capacity to appropriate its blessings: neither have 
we prepared the way for God's interference, as 
we have not fully exhausted our own resources, and 
thus disclosed the fact, the amount, and the nature 
of our need. Our prayers should therefore be pre- 
meditated, should embody only what we intently 
long for, what we are convinced we truly require, 
what after repeated trial we find otherwise beyond 
our reach, and what in order to obtain we are 
willing to sacrifice any lower pleasures that stand in 
their way. 

Having thus, after most careful reflection, deter- 
mined the nature of our requests, being willing to 
pay the cost involved in the grant, we should come 
boldly to our Father and in full faith plead our cause, 
and then set about life's duties, perfectly confident of 
a favorable answer. 

There must be this childlike faith; for Christ's 
words of promise were, " Therefore I say unto you, 
What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe 
that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." Christ 
demanded it of those upon whom he wrought miracles 
of healing : " Stretch forth thy hand," " Take up thy 
bed," "Go wash." In the command to make the 
effort there was clearly implied the promise to add 



102 0LD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

the strength ; but the effort must be made in most 
trustful confidence before the divine re-enforcement 
would come. "We with good reason rely implicitly 
upon the trustworthiness of Nature's divinely derived 
physical forces. We are willing to stake, and in fact 
do stake again and again, our very lives and fortunes 
on our belief in their promptly answering to our 
call the very moment certain conditions are fulfilled, 
and in the surety we feel in their honoring to the 
letter the terms of their commission. Why not as con- 
fidently rely on that more direct divine force for whose 
help we pray, for it is in as true a sense conditional, 
with conditions as exact, and it is as prompt and ready 
to render service the instant those conditions are com- 
plied with ? Eest assured, not until we throw our- 
selves as unreservedly on the arm of the Almighty as 
we do on the operations of these lower delegated 
forces, and this faith is inwrought into the very tex- 
ture of our lives, can the blessing come. 

To have the right spirit when we pray, we must 
also have our thoughts purged thoroughly from all 
forms of selfishness. It would seem that so patent 
a truth requires not even a statement ; but this ele- 
ment presents such protean forms, it is so subtle, 
assumes so many disguises, borrowing the very livery 
of heaven, that even the noblest are many times self- 
deceived. 

Every reasonable prayer offered thus in a right 
spirit is certain of favorable answer. The blessings 
bestowed will be either specifically or substantially 
what we ask— specifically when the objects sought 
prove to be or to embody what they seem. This is 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 103 

not always, and perhaps not often, the case ; and be- 
cause of that, the blessings are substantially rather 
than specifically granted. To illustrate : I remember 
some years since noticing in a show-window what ap- 
peared to be a basket of most luscious fruit. The 
forms and the delicate shadings were remarkable fac- 
similes of Nature's handiwork. The bloom was on 
the peach and the plum and the purple cluster. On 
the cheek of the apple glowed those brilliant sunset 
tints we so admire. The rich, juicy look of the sliced 
melon was brought out most marvelously. It was a 
masterpiece of art. I have often thought how differ- 
ently my little boy, had he been with me, would have 
looked on this overflowing basket. To him it would 
have been a complete deception, and he no doubt would 
have pleaded with me to make him the happy pos- 
sessor of it—not that he might feast his eyes, but his 
palate. The cool flavors, not the colorings and curves 
of beauty, would have filled his fancy. A specific 
answer to his plea would have been a downright dis- 
appointment, a disillusion, which he would not at all 
have relished, for he would have found it but a cun- 
ning device of paint and plaster. To have obtained 
for him the fruit itself, of which he saw only a skillful 
imitation, would have been to answer his prayer sub- 
stantially and satisfy his real longings. 

Many point to the case of President Garfield as a 
notable instance of the failure of the prayer test. 
Countless petitions went up from loving and anxious 
hearts for his recovery, and yet he died. Because 
God did not answer these prayers specifically, it is 
strenuously contended that he did not answer them 



101 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

at all. But how can we, witli our extremely limited 
knowledge, pronounce intelligently on a matter so 
complicate, involving so many interests — personal, 
domestic, and national ? Is it not possible that God 
conferred substantially the blessings sought, and that 
the profits and pleasures which we supposed would 
flow from Garfield's continuance in the private home 
circle and in his exalted post of public service were 
absolutely insignificant compared with what his mar- 
tyrdom could under divine guidance be made to 
yield ? God very easily could have thwarted the fell 
purpose of the assassin, and that vast volume of ago- 
nizing prayer would never have ascended to his throne 
from this stricken people. But do you not remember 
how that event melted into most loving sympathy the 
hearts not only of all sections of this great nation, 
but of all the civilized countries on the globe ? Gar- 
field's suffering and death gave to this generation, 
under God's beneficent overruling, a spiritual impetus 
and exaltation which this eminent statesman, through 
a life however long and prosperous, might never have 
secured. That prayerful and nobly sympathetic atti- 
tude of all good people unquestionably made it possible, 
as nothing else could, for God to thus convert this 
seeming catastrophe into a most blessed benefaction. 

Perhaps he saw such combination of qualities in 
Garfield's character and in the character of his coun- 
selors as to him seemed ominous of evil. There is 
many a danger-signal which we do not detect, or even 
suspect to exist. It may be, too, God thus sought to 
impress upon us again one of those lessons taught in 
President Lincoln's sudden death, just as the terrible 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 10 5 

war-clouds were lifting, that a nation's strength and 
safety depend not upon any frail human life, but upon 
the cherishing of right principles and the continuance 
of the divine care. For our earthly bereavements 
and losses we may, if we will, secure priceless com- 
pensations, " for our light affliction, which is but for 
a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory." 

What deep peace has come, and will come still as 
the years go by, to that once weeping home circle, 
through the ever sacred memories of the dead ! What 
fondly cherished hopes have been awakened of glad 
reunions in that golden by and by ! 

The results to President Garfield himself of his 
weeks of suffering, and final exchange of worlds, while 
right at the very zenith of his power and his popu- 
larity, we have very inadequate means of measuring ; 
for directly behind him, as he answered the summons, 
there fell an impenetrable veil of mystery. Perhaps, 
when we too have crossed the river, we shall find 
that those prayers for life were answered by the gift 
of larger, grander life than he in his loftiest moods 
had ever dreamed of getting. 

It frequently occurs that most earnest prayers are 
offered to promote what appear to be directly antago- 
nistic interests. This fact came out very prominently 
during our late civil war. For each of the fiercely 
contending armies victory was passionately pleaded 
for by most devout believers. Who would question 
the sterling integrity or religious fervor of Stonewall 
Jackson? and, as we well know, he fought as he 
prayed. lie imperiled his life and finally gave it as 



106 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

a noble sacrifice to the Southern cause. Were his 
prayers unavailing ? Did God turn a deaf ear to the 
pleadings of this earnest, self-sacrificing disciple? 
Most assuredly not, though specifically his prayer was 
denied. Those who fought with him side by side 
and shared his local loves and aspirations, but who 
have been spared to see this day and to enjoy the 
phenomenal prosperity of the New South— its quick- 
ened pulse, the development of its inexhaustible 
mineral resources, the birth of its gigantic manufac- 
turing enterprises, its improved agriculture, its rapidly 
growing cities, its business boom everywhere, and, 
more than all, its intellectual and moral renascence, 
and the ushering in of a new era of permanent peace, 
of genuine fraternal feeling, binding it in indissoluble 
union with those whom it once faced as foes on 
stricken fields— those who have thus lived to see this 
day, with its rich blessings already realized and with 
its assured prophecies of vastly multiplied prosperities, 
recognize now that God, while he swept away their 
cherished institution of slavery and denied them 
Southern autonomy, suffered their land to be overrun 
with devastating war, their homes to be left desolate, 
and their once proud banners to be torn by cannon 
shot and trailed in the dust, not only granted them 
the real blessings which they sought, but multiplied 
them ten thousandfold. They lamentably erred, as 
they are now free to confess, as to the channels 
through which those blessings could come, and they 
have lived to thank God that he, in his deeper wis- 
dom and in his larger love, himself chose the means 
through which he should bestow his gifts. 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 107 

We have discovered in the physical universe mul- 
titudes of deadly poisons, hidden under various dis- 
guises, bearing remarkably close resemblance to sub- 
stances that are useful and life-giving. Many of 
them elude our senses altogether. We fail even with 
our microscopes and our most careful chemical tests 
to tear off their masks. We learn of their presence 
only by their alarming mischief -making. How many 
of our serious diseases are traceable to these inimical 
forces, that lurk in the air and water, in the vegetable 
and animal food, which we take into our systems un- 
suspectingly ! We are also exposed to intellectual and 
moral poisons as subtle, as concealed, as deadly, as 
these which threaten us in the world of matter. How 
true it is that we are " but children crying in the night, 
crying for the light, and with no language but a cry,'' 
so little certain knowledge have we of what will do us 
good; and yet, with what unseemly haste we let go 
our faith, and think our prayers unheard, so soon as 
any of these hidden poisons are denied ! 

I remember reading in my early school days, in 
one of the text-books, of a nobleman who, while on 
his return from a long hunt with his favorite hawk 
on a hot summer's day, filled his cup from a sparkling 
riyulet that was leaping down the sides of the moun- 
tain. As he was lifting it to his parched lips his 
hawk with a sudden sweep of wings dashed it from 
his hand, and then, with a strange, anxious call, flew 
along the bank of the stream toward its source. The 
nobleman, no little annoyed, again essayed to drink ; 
but the bird the second time upset the cup, and flut- 
tered and called along up the mountain side the same 
8 



108 0LD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

as before. A third time the cup was lifted, and a 
third time its coveted contents were spilled. The 
hunter, tired and thirsty, his patience gone, with 
quick resentment struck his bird a fatal blow. Then, 
as he looked on his favorite, dead at his feet, it oc- 
curred to him to follow up the stream, for the strange 
conduct of the bird and his strange call had at last 
impressed him. In the spring, at the very fountain 
head, he found, to his utmost horror, the half -decayed 
carcass of a huge serpent, and it flashed upon him 
that it was deadly poison he had been lifting to his 
lips, that the faithful bird had saved his master's 
life' and that this same master in a fit of blind passion 
had ruthlessly destroyed his. Full of remorse, he 
dug a grave, laid the bird tenderly in it, and after- 
ward, to mark the spot and tell of his gratitude and 
his grief, he raised a marble shaft above this his 
humble benefactor. Is there not a lesson here for 
us ? When we are baffled and beaten back in some 
of our cherished purposes, when the cups of sparkling 
pleasure which we are eagerly raising to our parched 
lips are dashed from us, let us not in our haste con- 
clude that our prayers are unblessed, that God has 
either turned away in deaf indifference, and left us 
to our fate, or become our covert foe. The seemingly 
hostile forces may be the very angels of his kindest 
providence, commissioned to smite from our lips by 
the beating of their strong pinions sparkling draughts 
which have come from poisoned springs. 

With these explanations I reaffirm with added 
emphasis that every reasonable prayer offered in a 
right spirit is certain of favorable answer. To this, 



SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 109 

as we have- seen, science can urge no valid objection. 

It is in consonance with the soundest philosophy ; it 

is in fulfilment of divine promise ; it responds to the 

deepest intuitions of human hearts. 

The first effect of modern scientific inquiry has 

been to weaken faith, and make God seem simply 
an impersonal, great First Cause, rather than a pres- 
ent loving Father, and ourselves but processes in a 
vast evolution, parts in an unchangeable order, wheels 
and pinions, merely, in a mechanism whose move- 
ments reach from motes to sun-clusters. A reaction 
from this paralyzing scepticism has already set in. 
A faith fervent as that felt before science had birth, 
seems destined again to prevail, and to be the out- 
come of this very spirit of inquiry which for the past 
few decades has threatened to relegate it forever to the 
limbo of the world's outgrown and discarded thought. 
Reappearing this time as the ripe result of this nine- 
teenth century's tireless and fearless research into 
time's deepest mysteries, I can not see how ever 
again it can lose its hold on the hearts of men. 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 



in 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 

I. 

Skeptics of to-day take issue with Christian 
thinkers, not as to the fact of a historic Christ, but 
as to his nature, contending that he is nothing more 
than one of the world's great original geniuses who 
attained eminence in the department of religious 
thought, and whose fortune it was to nourish in an 
age naturally superstitious because antedating scien- 
tific inquiry — an age in which popular reverence en- 
veloped the heads of its heroes in a halo of divine 
light and taxed the credulity of after-centuries by 
myths and traditions of their marvelous miracle- 
working. 

They do not hesitate to concede that he was a 
man of excellent spirit, profound wisdom, exception- 
ally pure life, that his discourses abound in most 
praiseworthy sentiment. Neither do they hesitate to 
afhrm that to account him divine is a notion excus- 
able, it may be, in some confiding child-age of the 
world, awed by mystery and ridden by priests, but 
ill beseeming the bold, investigating spirit of the 
nineteenth century. 

113 



114: OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

As this opinion widely prevails in learned and 
especially scientific circles, and is gaining ground so 
rapidly that we meet it everywhere in books, in the 
columns of the press, on the platform, and in the 
thoughtful social circle, every earnest truth-seeker 
feels impelled to thoroughly re-examine this most 
vital and vexed of all the questions that have come 
up for settlement, " What think ye of Christ ? whose 
son is he ? " and to decide whether the answer given 
by infidel or Christian best bears the crucial test of 
modern thought. 

We find on reflection that this question naturally 
resolves itself into these three : 

1. Is man of sufficient worth to warrant such con- 
descension and sacrifice on Cod's part as were displayed 
in Christ ? 

2. Is such earthly mission absolutely necessary to 
free man from the guilt of sin and the power of it ? 

3. Are there in the characteristics and career of 
Christ convincing evidences that he was that Divine 
Yisitant engaged in this most astounding mission of 
mercy ? 

1. Is man a being of such transcendent worth that 
the great God of the universe, in order to reclaim 
him from sin, would leave the throne of his glory, 
dwell inside a frail human body, live a life of ex- 
tremest poverty, and suffer himself to be humiliated, 
scoffed at, traduced, forsaken of friends, and finally 
put to a cruel and shameful death by the hands of 
hate ? 

When we view the vast world-peopled heavens 
through the tubes of our telescopes, and reflect that 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 115 

our little _earth is but a single grain of sand on the 
measureless shores of immensity ; that the solar sys- 
tem, of which our globe is but a very inconspicuous 
member, is only one of millions of similar systems 
that compose the galaxy or Milky Way whose lumin- 
ous band encircles the heavens ; and that this mighty 
nebula is but one out of thousands of sun-clusters 
already uncovered by the searching eyes of science, 
we are overwhelmed with the vastness of God's plans 
and cares, and instinctively feel that it would be the 
height of presumption to suppose that he has given 
any special attention to the welfare of this single race 
of beings that inhabit this little satellite, much more 
that he has laid aside for them his robes of royalty, 
dismissed his brilliant retinue of angels, become a 
member of an obscure peasant family of Jews, and 
permitted himself to be despised, afflicted, and smitten 
of men. 

If we confine our minds to these lines of thought 
solely, the upas tree of unbelief will soon cast its 
baleful shadow over us. But, happily, science has 
carried the torch of knowledge far down the corridors 
of forgotten time and disclosed a well-nigh infinite 
patience and painstaking on the part of the Almighty 
in incarnating right here, by successive acts of crea- 
tion, his conception of life. The earth is small in- 
deed, being twelve hundred thousand times less in 
bulk than the sun it circles. But the microscope 
tells us that G-od does not need vast stellar spaces 
and ponderous masses of matter in which to work his 
wonders ; that he can embody his choicest thoughts, 
if he chooses, as readily within the infinitesimal 



HO OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

boundaries of atoms as within the wide circumfer- 
ences of suns ; that with him bulk or avoirdupois is 
not the unit of worth; that the germ-force lodged 
inside every minute sphere of fish-spawn exhibits in 
its work the same divine depth of wisdom and per- 
fection of skill that characterize the operations of 
those mighty organizing forces that convert amorphic 
vapor-banks into million-sphered sun-clusters. The 
spectroscope tells us that other worlds are constituted 
like our own, that processes of planet-making are still 
going on, and that marks of incompleteness and evi- 
dences of continued evolution are clearly traceable; 
and the idea naturally suggests itself that it is by no 
means improbable that many yet incomplete and un- 
inhabited worlds are to be peopled from this very 
globe of ours. Certain it is, through the gates of 
death have passed out somewhere, age after age, 
countless multitudes of disembodied spirits ; and who 
can tell when this mysterious procession of thronging 
souls shall cease to come and go across this narrow 
stage of being? For aught we know, earth is the 
nursery of the universe, the great training-school of 
the stars. 

The very scientists who decry Christianity have 
by their researches unwittingly so exalted our con- 
ceptions of man's place in Nature as to silence all 
questioning whether, in order to effect his salvation, 
God would consent to such a sacrifice as that claimed, 
provided this end could in no other way be secured. 
Most abundant and convincing evidences have been 
unearthed of the fact that God, after hundreds of 
thousands of years of patient progressive work, reached 



SC1EXCE AND CHEIST. 117 

in man the full and final expression, the ultima Thide 
of creative thought on this planet. 

"Would that somehow we might be lifted in con- 
templation to some far height, where with sweeping 
glance we could note as mapped out beneath us over 
the populous periods of the past those majestic out- 
lines of divine purpose which found in man, in his 
gifts and destiny, its long-awaited consummation ! 

In our geological researches we find that God 
revealed almost at the outset his full ground-plan of 
vital organization, the fossil records of the rocks de- 
claring that mollusks, radiates, articulates, and verte- 
brates—the four cardinal characteristics, the set pat- 
terns after which all bodify forms have since been 
built— appeared on the earth nearly at the same 
epoch; and the fact that around these primal con- 
ceptions all other creative thoughts have clustered 
and have served simply to unfold their well-nigh in- 
exhaustible possibilities of adaption to the demands of 
an ever- varying environment ; and the further fact 
that not one of them has fallen into disuse, but is as 
distinct and dominant to-day as at their first appear- 
ing, that they have survived all changes, withstood 
climates and cataclysms, have neither increased nor 
diminished, were clearly marked at the first, are 
clearly marked now— may be taken as a sure token 
that God's ultimate purpose as to the framework of 
living organisms has been reached. 

After the highest, most complex of these four 
types— the vertebrates— the human body has been 
fashioned, and in this sub-kingdom it ranks among 
the Mammalia, the highest of the five classes, and in 



US OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

this class among the Primates, the highest of the 
twelve orders, being considered by scientists the last 
term of an organic series. And it not only far sur- 
passes all other organisms as a physical instrument of 
the mind, but bears upon it such marks of divine 
completeness, such absolute competency to perform 
the most complicated and the most exalted tasks to 
which pieces of mechanism can possibly be assigned, 
that we may safely affirm that in it the full divine 
ideal has been attained. 

Let us consider this a little in detail. Hugh 
Miller has called attention to the fact that in man 
alone the body assumes an ideal position. JSTo other 
vertebrate stands erect. Between the horizontal fish 
and the partially stooping ape spinal columns may be 
found at every degree of the quadrant. 

In organs of sense-perception and in powers of 
manipulation man's body furnishes to his intellect 
an equipment so admirable in its completeness that 
nothing further can reasonably be desired or can be 
used to advantage, and in the well-nigh universal 
range of its capacities is immeasurably superior to 
that of any other animal. It is true that a dog's 
scent, a gorilla's hand, an eagle's eye, a horse's neck, 
in some points surpass our own. Many animals have 
been better clad by Nature for warmth and beauty 
than we, have more impenetrable armor, sharper 
claws and teeth, easier and swifter locomotion, greater 
powers of endurance. Many have their limbs termi- 
nated in most cunningly fashioned tools, which from 
the first they know precisely how to use most effect- 
ively. But though we can point to this one or that 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 119 

which in some respects has an organ more perfect, or 
more perfectly under control, yet through the sover- 
eignty of our intellects, through their power of in- 
ventive and adaptive thought, we are able to bring 
our bodies into such development and training, and 
to fashion and place in our hands such tools, and so 
to supplement our organs by those of the animals 
below us, which we domesticate, and also so to utilize 
Nature's forces, that our minds have at last at their 
^disposal the acutest senses and the strongest muscles 
in the world. We make our own the scent of the 
dog, the wing power of the bird, the strength of the 
horse, the sight of the cat, the instinct of the bee. 

The camel, that living ship of the desert, with its 
great store of fat on its back, thick sole on its foot, 
long lash of its eye, its self-closing nostril, capacious 
honeycombed water-bags, wondrously acute sight and 
smell, its almost exhaustless endurance of muscular 
fiber, is especially fitted to withstand the privations 
and the blinding, suffocating siroccos of the desert. 
Man has long since so thoroughly domesticated the 
only two known species of this animal that not a 
single individual now exists in a wild state. It has 
become so emphatically the servant of man that the 
earth's widest sand- wastes have been turned into high- 
ways of commerce, across which richly laden caravans 
are constantly threading their way. 

We not only develop our own organs into marvel- 
ous capacity by patient training, and supplement 
them by appropriating those of the brutes, but we 
vastly multiply their original resources by ingenious 
seizure of Nature's elemental forces, so that we speak 



120 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

with telephones, look through the tubes of great re- 
fractors, add to our detective sense of taste and touch 
and smell by chemical tests, multiply our muscular 
powers by applying steam, wind, electric energies, 
until we can lift mountains, walk over seas or under 
them, send our voices across continents, transport our 
bodies to the clouds or burrow them thousands of feet 
under ground, brave the suns of tropics and the frozen 
breath of arctic zones. From the shorn lamb's fleece 
and the worm's spun shroud we weave our woolen 
and silken fabrics. The furry skins of the seal and 
the otter and the mink protect our hairless backs, the 
brilliant feathers of birds grace our persons, the skilled 
industries of all the instinct-guided creatures below 
us contribute to the cheer and beauty of our homes. 
Were our bodies more fully equipped, our minds 
would have less stimulus for development. Just 
enough of bodily endowment has been granted to 
show us what we lack and how to get it, to create in 
us a desire and a purpose to add to our store, the 
effect being not to discourage, but to awaken and 
incite. !N"o animal has any natural bodily advantage 
that is not in our reach to acquire or use ; so that all 
the marvelous gifts of all the species of sentient life 
we have a right to regard as parts of our own fleshly 
furnishing, and we have a reason to believe that for 
the housing of the human mind all Nature has been 
commissioned by the Almighty to pay bountiful 
tribute. In this element of universality lie the in- 
signia of royalty. The bee steps out from its cradle 
most admirably equipped with tools for a specified 
work and with all the unerring skill of an expert, 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 121 

but its sphere is an extremely narrow one. It has no 
reaching out of desire or of power, except for the 
smallest part of this broad heritage. To drink from 
the nectar cup of flowers, to fill its pollen basket and 
wax pouches, to build its cells and store them with 
honey or eggs — these are to it the sum total of life, 
its utmost longing, its unchangeable destiny. So with 
every other one of God's creatures. In marked con- 
trast to man, most circumscribed spheres and sub- 
ordinate positions are assigned them. 

Furthermore, man's bodily organs, even when 
taken apart by themselves, unsupplemented, are, if 
considered each in the entirety of its powers, in its 
flexibility and range, immeasurably superior to those 
of all other animals, even the most gifted. 

Man's hand, which is far in the lead of all his 
other organs as a serviceable implement of the mind, 
though in general structure and characteristics re- 
sembling that of the ape or of the lemuroid, is vastly 
superior as to both the variety, delicacy, precision, 
and swiftness of its movements. Only man's hand is 
fully and permanently lifted from the ground, and 
relieved from the task of assisting in locomotion and 
support — tasks which greatly tend to lessen its supple- 
ness and to blunt its finer sensibilities. It alone can 
with readiness oppose the thumb to the fingers for 
the purposes of seizure, or is capable of pronation and 
supination — that is, of so rolling itself that the back or 
the palm shall at will lie uppermost. The gorilla's 
hand has greater grasping power, but in this its supe- 
riority ceases ; for, being designed only for coarse and 
menial offices, as the servant of a sluggish, shallow, 



122 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

and wholly brutish mind, every finer quality either 
was at the first denied it, or has through neglect been 
long since withdrawn. 

It is in the hand that our sense of touch is most 
acute. We feel by means of papillae — rodlike bodies 
about one hundredth of an inch long, coming up out 
of the lowest part of the cuticle, and composed of 
nerves, blood-vessels, and fibrous tissue — and it is 
right at the tips of our fingers that these are the most 
abundant, though they may be found scattered every- 
where over the surface of the body, and the extent to 
which the revealing power of the fingers through this 
sense has been carried by careful culture may well fill 
us with most profound amazement. Experts among 
the world's workers sometimes seem gifted with 
magical insight. The silk throwsters of Bengal, for 
instance, can by the touch alone distinguish twenty 
different degrees of fineness in cocoons, even before 
they are unwound. The achievements of the blind, 
who have been forced to make their fingers supply in 
part their loss of sight, show us how almost limitless 
are our possibilities in this direction, for they have 
gone so far as to determine even differences of color, 
so we are informed by Dr. Kitto in his work on 
The Lost Senses. This expertness is attained by 
constantly recalling former experiences, instituting 
comparisons, and completely absorbing the attention. 
Dr. William B. Carpenter assures us that we can by 
persistently willing it increase the flow of the nour- 
ishing blood to any point in the body, and thereby 
perceptibly increase the vigor and activity, and pro- 
mote the growth, of any organ or sense. Even these 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 123 

minute papillae can thus be reached and rendered 
more effective. Indeed, no limit has yet been found 
to their attainment, when a capacious, aspiring, domi- 
nant mind insists upon increased facilities of outlook. 
The body is under the plastic power of the mind far 
more than we are apt to think. How the musician 
adds by patient drill to the strength, celerity, and 
precision of his finger touch ! His hands at last fly 
over the keyboard of the piano like fairy sprites, exe- 
cuting with lightning speed and delicate nicety the 
most difficult commands of their master. He has, it 
is true, found one impediment in the way of the per- 
fection of his art, but he has also found that that im- 
pediment can be removed by the skill of the surgeon. 
There is a certain cord, a relic from our brute an- 
cestry, so scientists tell us, that partially binds the 
third finger. The lancet sets it free. 

It is deeply interesting to note the various partial 
embodiments of the divine ideal in this portion of the 
body's furnishing, to see in how many ways the hand 
may be modified to suit the different needs of different 
modes of life, answering as a paddle to the whale, its 
digits without claws or nails being so connected and 
covered with integument as to have their individu- 
ality well-nigh obscured ; serving as a wing to the 
bat, its elongated fingers glued fast to broad pieces of 
skin to be spread or furled at the pleasure of this little 
flying mouse ; or serving as a grasping hook to the 
sloth, with which to hang in mid-air hour after hour 
from some branch in its forest home, its slender fin- 
gers, lying side by side, always curved and ending in 

curved claws ; or, still further, being used as a nut- 
9 



124 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

pick by the aye-aye, with its single bony finger 
stretched out to a seemingly abnormal length. 

But, while we note how each brute's hand is ad- 
mirably fitted for some specific work, we note also 
how specific that work is, how extremely limited the 
sphere of action, how forever precluded, by the 
peculiarity of its structure and the hopelessly menial 
character of its tasks, from any further enlargement 
or refinement of power. As we study the achieve- 
ments of the human hand, and observe how the hu- 
man mind can, seemingly without limit, multiply and 
exalt its powers, we feel warranted in regarding this 
most wonderful combination of bone and horny plate, 
muscle and tendon and cartilage, ligament, cuticle, 
blood-vessel, and nerve fiber, as the final and full em- 
bodiment of God's ideal, as in this direction the 
ultima Thule of his thought. 

This is equally true of the mind's other fleshly 
furnishings. Anatomists astonish us with the state- 
ment that, in providing a window through which 
man may look out on earth and sky, there has been 
effected a combination of eight hundred different 
complemental contrivances. The structure of the 
eye is essentially the same in all the mammalian gen- 
era. There are, it is true, some animals of peculiar 
needs which have had their eyes correspondingly 
modified. Amphibious mammals, as the whale and 
seal, have eyes built, like the fish, without tear 
glands, with spherical lenses, and with thickened 
rear walls for pushing forward the retinge, and 
thus securing great refractive and microscopic pow- 
er, in order that they may thus more readily find 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 12 5 

their way- and procure their food in the dense salt 

seas. 

In some genera the shape of the pnpil is varied, 
and in some the eye's interior chamber, instead of 
being painted black, fitted for absorbing light, is cov- 
ered with a pigment of brilliant metallic luster, fitted 
for reflecting it on the retina, and thus rendering it 
possible for the animal to see and seize its prey in the 
darkest hours of night. The birds, a lower order of 
creation, have eyes which, to suit the demands of 
swifter locomotion, can adjust the focus for different 
distances more rapidly than mammals. They also 
have a third eyelid, which, when not in use, lies folded 
at the inner corner, ready to be spread by two little 
muscles which have it in charge, like a thin gauze 
veil, to temper the sun's glare, which otherwise would 
blind them. Insects' eyes are made stationary ; and, 
to enable these Lilliputians to see in every direction, 
each one has been furnished with two clusters, each 
cluster numbering, in some cases, as of beetles, as high 
as twenty thousand, each eye set in a different direc- 
tion, and having a separate optic nerve, lens, iris, and 
pupil. But these variations are simply offsets to dis- 
advantages belonging to the habitat, or ways of mak- 
ing good some defect inherent in the eye itself. Man's 
eye, with its power to roll in the socket, lubricate the 
parts,^ enlarge the pupil, adjust the focus, and avoid 
spherical aberration, seems to lack in nothing essential 
to perfect vision. It has power to see a particle 
measuring but one ^ve hundredth of an inch on a 
side, and a thread but one forty-nine hundredth of an 
inch in thickness. Whatever its limitations and de- 



126 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

f ects, the mind has found it quite possible to fully 
make them good, not only by artificial aids the results 
of its ingenious contriving, but by sheer force of will, 
compelling the blood to strengthen it and enlarge its 
varied parts, as already alluded to. But, more espe- 
cially, it can, by rigidly fixing the attention, constantly 
striving after closer observation, cultivating its aes- 
thetic tastes, contrasting and comparing, finally, in a 
most marked degree, increase the sensitiveness of the 
retina so that the most delicate lines in the sunbeam- 
painted pictures shall stand out distinctly without 
blur or defacement, and the impression in all its full- 
ness shall be carried over the optic nerve to the brain. 
Just here lies the eye's chief capacity for improve- 
ment and enlargement of power, and, as in the case 
of the hand, there has as yet been found no limit 
to the mind's plastic influence over it. The experi- 
ences of artisans and artists and star-gazers, and all 
trained observers, abundantly corroborate this state- 
ment. 

Very few of the objects that come within the 
brute's range of vision ever make an impression on 
the brute's brain. ISo cognizance is taken. Sun- 
beams may paint their pictures never so deftly, they 
fade unnoticed from the canvas. Here has been pro- 
vided an apparatus whose possibilities of achievement 
lie all undiscovered until the advent of man, and that 
too of the most gifted and cultured man— possibilities 
which are still unexhausted and even undetermined, 
notwithstanding so many centuries of civilization. 
There is certainly every indication that God here con- 
templates no improvement which use can not develop, 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 127 

that lie has given to this organ its stamp of divine 
completeness. 

The human ear is a marvel and a mystery — a 
marvel in the scope and perfection of its interpretative, 
power, a mystery in the modes of its working. 
Scientists with all their tireless research confess that 
in many very important particulars it still baffles their 
efforts to unlock its secrets. The anatomist, with his 
dissecting knife, his microscope, his chemical tests, 
his delicate scales, and his minute measuring lines, 
has been enabled to present to us a passably clear con- 
ception of the different parts of this piece of match- 
less mechanism. With his help we note first the 
auricle, or outer ear, with its peculiarly grooved frame- 
work of cartilage to serve as a sounding board. The 
pulses of the air, we find, are gathered and guided by 
this into a narrow, winding passage, called the audi- 
tory canal, along which they beat until they strike the 
membrane of the tympanum. Behind this lies a little 
chamber, known as the middle ear, across which is 
hung an irregular chain of bones — the first link 
shaped like a mallet, the second like an anvil, the 
third as round and small as the head of a pin, the 
fourth bearing the familiar form of a stirrup. These 
are supposed, though not known, to carry along 
their line the vibratory movements of the tym- 
panic membrane to the inner ear, in which lie pe- 
ripheral end organs of the minutely subdivided 
auditory nerve. Here, in this so-called labyrinth, 
are the vestibule, the semicircular canals, and the 
cochlea. Here the outer world's messages of sound 
are in some mysterious way sent flashing over the 



128 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

wires until they end in molecular changes of the 

brain. 

There are three characteristics of musical sounds 
■which by this instrument we are able to distinguish — 
the pitch, the intensity, and the timbre of the tone. 
In what this last consists, in the determining of which 
the other two play no part, or in what way it is com- 
municated, are matters of still grave dispute. But 
what puzzles scientists most, and piques their curi- 
osity, is the ear's achievement of taking in and com- 
municating not only melody, but harmony of sound, 
and at the same time keeping separate the individual 
notes which are used in each combination. Whether 
the fibers which are stretched across the central coat 
of the membrane of the tympanum, and radiate from 
the attached handle of the mallet bone, can, by means 
of their difference in length, size, and tension, sym- 
pathetically respond to the different waves of sound, 
if sound is propagated by waves, which some dis- 
pute; or whether the three thousand rods of the 
organ of Corti to be found floating in the fluid that 
fills the winding chambers of the cochlea constitute a 
keyboard to answer the air wave's finger touch ; or 
whether the end is attained through some yet undis- 
covered process — is a matter still to be determined. 

We have by our training brought this wonderful 
instrument to such a degree of perfection that we 
have succeeded in taking cognizance of sounds so low 
as to be formed from as few as thirty vibrations per 
second, so advocates of the undulatory theory tell us, 
and so high as to come from as many as thirty thou- 
sand, so flexible is it, so capable of enlargement of 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. ^9 

capacity, so responsive to the behests of the aggres- 
sive human will behind it. Practical musicians have 
at last reached such keen discrimination that they per- 
ceive a difference of pitch amounting to no more than 
one sixty-fourth of a semitone. Does it not seem 
that in this bodily sense also, as in the others con- 
sidered, the Creator's grand ideal has been fully 
realized ? 

Our olfactory nerves, though in some cases less 
acute than those of brutes, are evidently of far wider 
range and suited to and designed for nobler service, 
being something more than grimly utilitarian, to be 
employed as aids in procuring and selecting food, and 
in sounding alarm when dangers impend. These sets 
of nerves in man not only subserve these lower ends, 
but are also sources of exquisite pleasure and aesthetic 
refinement, and enter in as most important factors in 
the great scheme of the world's intellectual develop- 
ment. The arts and sciences with rarely an exception 
place them under tribute. We gain some conception 
of the well-nigh preternatural sensitiveness of the 
ends of these minute nerve-fibers, as well as of the 
almost infinite divisibility of matter, when we reflect 
that one one-thousandth of a milligramme of mercap- 
tan when mixed with two hundred and thirty cubic 
metres of air will give out an odor clearly percep- 
tible to us. The scientists, who recently demon- 
strated this fact by experiment, estimate that it is 
only one fourteen hundred and sixty millionth part 
of a milligramme of this substance that comes in con- 
tact with the nerves of the nose at any one time, yet 
they can detect its presence. But the fact that it lies 



13 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

within reach of the human will to indefinitely increase 
the range and power of this interpretative organ 
should be especially noted, for in it lies the revelation 
that upon this subtile sense also has been affixed the 
seal of divine completeness. 

Had we space we might cite analogous facts per- 
taining to our powers of taste. 

That which has been found true with reference to 
those gifts of body that disclose what lies without, 
that unlock the doors opening into Nature's vast 
arena, may be equally affirmed of those that reveal 
what lies within, such as articulate speech, facial 
expression, gestures and pose of body, and peculiari- 
ties of gait and intonations of voice. Our bodies 
have here very marked original versatility of utter- 
ance, far transcending the bodies of brutes. Indeed, 
they have been utterly denied articulate speech, and 
laughter and tears and the tell-tale blush that mantles 
brow and cheek. Tor proofs of the almost limitless 
plastic power of the will over these thought-trans- 
mitting capacities of the body we have the confes- 
sions of noted conversationalists and orators and 
actors and rapture-thrilling vocalists, disclosing to us 
how, through persistent, painstaking drill, they have 
finally attained this their most wonderfully complete 

mastery. 

Wallace, speaking of the power, range, flexibility, 
and sweetness of the musical sounds producible by the 
human larynx, adds that the habits of savages give no 
indication of how this faculty could have been de- 
veloped, as the singing of savages is a more or less 
monotonous howling, and the females seldom sing at 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 131 

all. It saems as if the organ had been prepared in 
anticipation of the future progress of man, since it 
contains latent capacities which are useless to him in 
his earlier condition. 

Actors, to render more certain and telling their 
triumphs by kindling the imaginations of their audi- 
ences, surround themselves with the accessories of 
stage scenery ; and for the voice of the singer the 
sounding pipes of the organ, and the notes of all 
manner of metal and reed and stringed instruments, 
are called in as accompaniments, though that voice 
soars over all in the grand crescendo passages of the 
hallelujah chorus. 

And then, too, what charm of form, grace of 
motion, delicate tint and rapturous glow of beauty 
are reached at times by these gifted organized bodies 
of living dust ! To add still further to the inherent 
powers of fascination of the body, the restless spirit 
that dwells within it, and seeks through it aesthetic 
expression, decks it with flowers and plumes, gems 
and gold, and dyed garments of gracefully flowing 
folds, and, when possible, places it within a marble 
palace where electrically lighted apartments are ren- 
dered rich with works of decorative art ! 

But the foremost of all the organs of the human 
body — that which lifts man, as to all other orders of 
creation, into unapproachable pre-eminence — is the 
brain, whose massive lobes of convoluted gray matter 
constitute, as is supposed, the seat of the soul. It 
certainly is the central office from which radiates that 
complicated system of nerve lines over which are ever 
flashing night and day, waking and sleeping, telegrams 



132 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

of conscious and unconscious thought. The brain of 
the fish bears an average proportion to its spine of 
not more than two to one ; of the reptile, two and 
a half to one ; of the bird, three to one ; of the mam- 
mal, four to one ; while that of man bears an average 
of twenty-three to one. What a leap! How sig- 
nificant ! Here surely is a great gulf fixed. Man is 
thus at a single bound placed at an almost infinite 
remove from all sentient life about him in point of 
thought capacity ; and in the already completed cen- 
turies of his history he has shown that while there 
are some resemblances, there are not only vastly in- 
creased mental acumen and breadth, but also abso- 
lutely radical differences of mental structure; for 
while with the lower animals instinct is at the front, 
with man reason, the insect and the brute following 
blindly a course marked out by another, man de- 
liberately determining on a course for himself ; while 
one is confined to a narrow sphere and to temporary 
dominion, having no desire for or prospect of progress, 
the other, ever restless and dissatisfied at his present 
status, is driven on by an insatiable longing from con- 
quest to conquest until to every thoughtful student of 
individual and national history comes the grand concep- 
tion that man has been created for universal dominion 
and for endless growth ; that he was the long-expected 
guest toward whom all the prophecies in Nature have 
been pointing through the long geologic ages, that into 
his hands have been intrusted all the wonder-working 
forces with which Nature abounds, the keys that un- 
lock all the secret storehouses of material wealth, the 
art galleries, the conservatories of music, all the treas- 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 133 

uries of .suggestive thought ; that it surely was for 
him, who has shown himself capable of utilizing her 
riches, developing her possibilities, perfecting her in- 
completeness, training her forces, interpreting her 
hieroglyphs written on rock and sky, on sea and land, 
this wide world of wonders was being molded by the 
Creative Hand ; that it was for man the, crystalline 
forces in some long ago gathered the sediment of the 
primal seas into rock quarries and salt beds, the vege- 
tive forces produced the dense conifer growths of the 
carboniferous era and volcanic fires buried and baked 
them into beds of coal ; that for him the waters swarmed 
with fish, the fields were white with cotton, the long- 
fibered fleece grew on the back of the sheep, even the 
lowly worm spun and wove its silken shroud, the for- 
est oak buried its great roots in the soil, threw out its 
banners of leaves, and with its mighty arms grappled 
with the fierce storms of centuries in order that he 
might from its tough and sinewy stem fashion ribs 
for his ships and build a sheltering home for his little 
ones. 

The fact that the earth had for ages been a vast 
reservoir of minerals lying idle till man's advent, and 
that those qualities which render them fusible, malle- 
able, ductile, soluble, sealed secrets to all but him, 
have rendered them through his inventions conducive 
to his comfort and culture, is proof positive that it 
was for these very ends of use and for this very 
being of marvelous gifts that God fashioned them at 
the first. 

The fact that electricity— which for ages simply 
hung across the northern skies its mysterious banners 



134 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

of light and now and then crashed down from the 
clouds in death-dealing thunderbolts (now man's 
tamed Titan)— lights the streets of his cities, his work- 
shops and his marble halls, drives his machinery, 
draws his carriages, and flashes his thought over the 
everywhere interlacing telegraphic highways of mod- 
ern life, is proof positive that it was for these very 
ends of use and for this wondrous being that God fash- 
ioned at the first this most astonishing of all the forms 
of elemental force. 

The fact that man has shown himself capable, by 
following out the suggestions of Nature, of becoming 
a sort of subcreator, a finisher of God's work, develop- 
ing new and improved varieties of fruit and vegetables 
and exercising a plastic power even in the charmed 
circle of animal life, reclaiming the desert and morass, 
adding new tints to the rose, new lines of symmetry 
to the tree, new grace of curve to the river, new 
and fuller combination of charms to the landscape 
beauties with which earth abounds, is proof positive 
that it was in anticipation of man's coming that 
God left his work thus incomplete, and that it is to 
man's hand God at the first determined to intrust the 

finishing. 

The fact that man has proved himself able to 
thrive in all climes, on all foods, to build for himself 
homes out of all materials, to make the whole world 
his habitat, all animal species, all kinds of force, his 
docile household servants, his winged messengers, 
clothiers, purveyors, architects, even artists, and, 
when occasion fits, his grand orchestral choir, is proof 
positive that it was pre-eminently for man that God 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 135 

thus exercised his almost infinitely provident thought 
on this planet. 

The fact that man is thus a microcosm, all types 
of living organisms centering in him and becoming 
perfected ; that he is fast reaching universal sover- 
eignty through his ever-widening knowledge, stretch- 
ing out his scepter over the three great kingdoms of 
the world — the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal — 
and leaving the imprint of his personality everywhere ; 
that he is the great, the only cosmopolite at home on 
sand wastes or on tossing seas, in sheltered nooks or 
wind-swept mountain summits, under blazing equa- 
torial skies or amid the brooding stillness and desola- 
tion of the land of the iceberg and the creeping 
glacier ; that he can by a plastic, an almost creative, 
touch round out the partially finished designs of 
Nature into full completeness ; that he can hold con- 
verse through Nature with Nature's God, interpreting 
the thoughts embodied in earth's phenomena, deci- 
phering the handwriting on the leaves of the rock 
records of vast geologic periods, and thus tracing the 
ongoing and noting the trend of the divine purposes 
as from age to age they have found embodiment, and 
discovering in this history of earth's evolution evi- 
dences of the soundness of his own scientific classi- 
fications and thereby the striking likeness of his own 
thought to that of the Divine, threading his way 
through the labyrinthine mazes of the star-peopled 
heavens, determining the mechanism of the universe, 
calculating eclipses, weighing and analyzing suns ; the 
fact that he can thus, through his susceptibilities, his 
faculties of memory, of perception, of reasoning, of 



136 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

conceptive imagination, transmute into a populous 
world of thought within this populous world of fact 
without, furnishes proof positive that it was for this 
very end of use, the surrounding of man's spirit with 
a fitting environment, this planet has under the crea- 
tive and directive power of God been undergoing 
processes of evolution that extend back over a period 
so vastly remote that it completely transcends our 
utmost reach of thought. 

When we contemplate how inconceivably many 
have been the centuries consumed by God in his 
patient painstaking preparation for man's coming, 
what astounding riches of invention he has lavished 
upon it, what mighty and subtile secondary causes 
have been commissioned to forward the work, when 
with the help of science we trace the mighty evolu- 
tion of the ages and learn at last that man is the 
grand goal of creative purpose, the supreme consum- 
mation, the ultima fhule of Divine thought on this 
planet, how strikingly inadequate seem to us all the 
current estimates placed upon human life and human 
destiny ! 

And yet I have directed attention only to the less 
important of God's preparations for man's coming 
and to the less valuable of his bestowments upon this 
most favored child of his choice. To this complicate 
world-environment, to this subtile, organized body, to 
this interpretative and scepter-winning faculty of de- 
liberative thought, were added what far transcend 
them all and to which they were evidently designed 
but as accessories— the gifts of moral discernment and 
of responsible free choice. From their exercise, char- 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 



137 



acter— that which lifts us from brute being into Divine 
likeness— is finally evolved. This, from the very na- 
ture of the case, God could not directly create, but that 
this was a consummation which ever lay uppermost 
in all his thought through all the ages, to which he 
made every other consideration bend, there is now no 
shadow of doubt. His entire endeavor was directed to 
the making ready the conditions out of which character 
might be the final fruitage. To this end he not only 
bestowed upon man this gift of sovereignty, of abso- 
lute freedom of choice, and gave him capacity for 
moral motive and for judicial insight, but he abso- 
lutely atmosphered him with multiform disciplinary 
influences, and to this end established, as a universal 
law of fife, growth from germs through struggle. As 
I have elsewhere, in a paper entitled Satan Antici- 
pated,* described at length the operations of this law, 
I will here only very briefly outline the workings of 
this perhaps the most marvelous and deeply laid of 
all the plans of God. 

We note that plant life has germinal beginnings 
and a history of development, and the vegetive force, 
in its efforts to embody in material organic form the 
ideal given it, finds itself confronted every step of the 
way by persistently opposing forces with which it has 
to strenuously and successfully contend or be itself 
defeated. It meets the force of gravity at the very 
outset of its career and lifts its masses of matter, in 
some instances amounting to several tons, right against 
the steady antagonism of that force. It wrestles with 

* In Views on Vexed Questions. 



138 0LD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

the winds again and again, every contest resulting in 
tightening its root-grasp on the soil and toughening 
and compacting its fibered stem. It is compelled to 
tear asunder atoms which chemical forces are holding 
together with all their might, to actually drag these 
forces into its service and to fight unremittingly their 
disintegrating tendencies, re-enforced as they often 
are with the weakening depredations of hungry para- 
sites, until worn out with the struggle it at last suc- 
cumbs and disappears forever, leaving its palace of 
wonders to become shapeless and drifting dust again. 
Those mysteriously commissioned forces that build 
up and maintain animal organisms have closely corre- 
sponding battle histories ending at last in correspond- 
ingly fatal defeats. These histories are made up of 
like rendings asunder of chemical compounds, im- 
pressment into service of unwilling chemic forces, 
fierce fights with swarming parasitic foes, and at last 
the like endless leaden sleep of death. 

This was God's established order long before sin 
came. Man's moral fall has unquestionably multiplied 
diseases and hastened death, but it can not be charged 
with having first introduced them to this sorrow- 
burdened earth. Long before Adam there were sand 
wastes and pitfalls and cyclones and thunderbursts 
and poisonous airs and ravenous beasts. Bodies were 
made of perishable clay and environed with adverse 
influences. Life would have been a fierce contest 
even if sin had never come. Rare indeed are the 
paradisiacal spots where fruits grow with luxuriant 
spontaneity, where the air is soft and odor-laden, 
where the rays of the sun are always tempered and 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 139 

golden and full of balm, where the life of the flesh is 
a careless cloudless holiday. Even if sin had not 
come, disease would have paled the cheeks of loved 
ones and home circles would not have been without 
some vacant chairs. Anxieties, forebodings, care 
burdens, disappointed hopes, scalding tears would 
have been accompaniments of human life even if that 
life had been kept pure. This world as now consti- 
tuted was evidently designed as a means not an end, 
as disciplinary and developing, as a great training 
school for some higher form of existence. 

If death ends all, this present order of Nature, 
however full of matchless mechanism, of astounding 
achievement, however stamped with profoundest in- 
ventive thought, may be rightly counted a most 
lamentable failure ; but if God designed this life and 
this world as means for developing virtue, the present 
order of things is not only a marked success, but it 
takes on new and deeper meanings, it displays on 
God's part an infinitely greater care-taking than 
scientists have as yet discovered in all their investiga- 
tions. 

Virtue being beyond the range of God's creative 
power, being the result of the choices of a responsibly 
free will, as we have already stated, God was necessi- 
tated from the very nature of the case to pass man 
through some probationary period, make him amen- 
able to systems of law, place him inside a body easily 
deranged, full of appetites and passions and desires 
susceptible of over-indulgence, place him amid oppor- 
tunities for gratification left open to abuse that there- 
by he might learn self-mastery, amid dangers to prove 
10 L 



140 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

and develop his courage, amid trials and disappoint- 
ments to test his fortitude, amid objects of need to 
appeal to his better sympathies, amid hindrances by 
the surmounting of which to toughen the fiber of his 
spirit, to make him nobly, grandly aggressive. 

This preparation of untold centuries to secure a 
suitable habitat and housing for human souls, this 
well-nigh infinite painstaking and deliberate incurring 
of most fearful risks to school those souls into virtue, 
give us some intimation of God's high estimate of 
the possibilities of spiritual attainment concealed with- 
in these yet closely folded buds of promise. When 
we contemplate the great mass of mankind, study the 
dark history of the ages, when we realize to our 
thought how that myriads in every generation have 
come and gone revealing only narrow, sluggish, brutish 
minds, the slaves of appetite, victims of multiform 
tyrannizing forces, cowed by superstitious fears and 
consumed by greed, we are apt in our haste despair- 
ingly to conclude that the risks were too great and 
have proved fatal. But a more thoughtful study will 
convince us that the race is surely moving toward 
light and love. It sometimes seems very strange to 
us that God saw fit to wait through vast geologic pe- 
riods for his delegated mechanic and chemic forces to 
convert a shapeless bank of cosmic vapor into a planet 
fit for peopling, then to wait through other periods 
still, whose lengthened lapse we have no means of 
measuring, for earth in its physical features and in its 
lower sentient life to become a place habitable to man. 
Had he so chosen he could have called this globe into 
being in all the perfection of its latest age by the in- 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 141 

stent flash of his thought. All we can say is he 
preferred to wait, and to wait long. Think you his 
patience tires as the slow centuries of human progress 
wear away, that his courage fails, that his hope is 
growing dim ? He knows how long he can afford to 
wait. A thousand years in his sight are but as yester- 
day when it is past and as a watch in the night. 

But we anxiously ask what becomes of those count- 
less throngs of sin-distorted souls which hear death's 
summons unprepared and pass within the shadow 
This much I think we can safely say : not until God 
has fully compassed the resources of his infinite love 
to win back the erring and has finally lost all hope of 
their return will his striving cease and his sustaining 
presence be withdrawn. Yet when the last ray of 
hope is quenched in the great yearning heart of God 
then, but not till then, will the hardened ingrate rebel 
be forever banished from his presence. That men 
if they choose, can, despite all God's striving, sink 
down to devils we must concede, and also that 'at the 
last this appalling fate of banishment so long impend- 
ing, prophesied in the immutable laws of life as well 
as in God's written revelation, may become at last the 
dreaded doom of devils. 

But again we tremblingly inquire what is to be 
the future of those who before death have indeed be- 
come repentant and believing and had aspirations after 
better things and yet have been summoned hence 
while passing through perhaps the very first stages of 
moral development, or at best before discipline has 
ripened their powers or unfolded and confirmed their 
virtues. It can not be that their growth is thus ar- 



14,2 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

rested and they thus doomed to remain forever in- 
complete, yet further development can be effected 
only under disciplinary agencies similar to those now 
at work in this world. 

" Heaven is not reached at a single bound ; 
Bat we build the ladder on which we rise 
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 
And we mount to its summit round by round." 

Where they are to finish their training is not re- 
vealed, and it is of little moment inasmuch as the 
further atmosphering of these souls must remain es- 
sentially the same. Every human spirit comes gifted 
with a divine ideal to grow to and germinal impulses 
for growing, and he who made and gave will supply 
the environment of implements and influences and 
afford the time requisite for the full fashioning, even 
though centuries or millenniums must be consumed 
in opening those closely folded buds of promise into 
bloom. Not those who through life have been for- 
tune's apparent favorites, who have escaped the bap- 
tism of fire, who never, or rarely, have had their man- 
hood tried, should be tendered our congratulations, 
but rather those battle-scarred heroes who have 
come up through much tribulation, for " whom the 
Lord loveth he chasteneth," as only such can yet 
possibly be prepared to enter through the gates into 

the city. 

Have we been left to vague conjecture as to the 
nature and extent of each spirit-germ's divine com- 
mission, as to what, if any, are the impassable barriers 
to its capacities for growing, or has there appeared in 
the centuries a Shining One in the serene majesty of 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 143 

whose perfect consecration we find brought out at last 
in its completeness the grand ideal God has set and 
made possible for each created soul to grow to under 
the uplifting power of his presence ? It is now uni- 
versally conceded that there has visited the earth a 
personage called Christ, and that, whatever else he 
was, he was a created human soul, housed in a human 
body, hemmed in by all the ordinary human limita- 
tions, and rising at the last to no greater height of 
moral excellence than is possible to be attained by 
any of his disciples. The Sacred Kecord assures us 
that he was tempted in all points as we are. The 
same sustaining grace given him is offered us. To 
the same sublime height of loving self-sacrifice which 
he reached we may climb, for in the words of the 
command, " Love one another as I have loved you," 
there is the promise of the power. But to reach this 
fullness of Christ's stature will doubtless require on 
the part of most a longer schooling than this short 
life can give. But the schooling will certainly come. 
Full opportunity will be afforded. We are the sons 
of God, joint heirs with Christ. So far, then, as we 
can picture in our thought this transcendent person- 
age whose life and teachings have stood the test of the 
world's keenest scrutiny for now nearly two thousand 
years, so far we can conceive what we, if lovingly 
obedient, are, under the molding power of the divine 
presence, destined to become at some time during that 
far-off by and by. The day may be distant, but it is 
coming ; the standard high, but we may attain to it. 
The flesh is weak, is worn with pain, is full of im- 
portunate pleadings, but we may become its master. 



144: OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

The world offers glittering prizes, but we may over- 
come the world. Perils impend, but leaping thunder- 
bolts may not swerve us from our purpose. Calum- 
nies darken the air, but with an all-conquering calm 
we can wait the uncurtaining of God's to-morrow. 

"When will the battle period end ? To one class, 
at the recall of the despised gift ; to the other, at the 
perfecting of the divine image. The final outcome 
of God's creative work on this planet I believe will 
be a host, which no one can number, of glorified 
spirits who through suffering and struggle under the 
immutable laws of spiritual growth have attained 
unto the stature of the fullness of Christ. Not until 
we have ourselves entered into the " silent vastnesses 
of eternity " can we form any adequate conception of 
the glory yet to be revealed in this creation's master- 
piece. 



II. 

I now call attention to the second and third divi- 
sions of my theme ; whether it was absolutely neces- 
sary for a Divine Visitant to come, and whether we 
have in the characteristics and career of the historic 
Christ convincing evidences that he was the Messiah 
foretold by Jewish prophets and by the world's most 
pressing needs. 

Every plant is an organic unit. Its parts are 
complemental and are linked so intimately that no 
one can be separated from the others without fatal 
results. Root, stem, branch, and leaf are vitally es- 
sential, each to each, must remain in intimate union, 
and each play its part. There is a life-current flow- 
ing from the tiniest rootlets that weave their network 
in the dark and damp of the underworld, to the 
veined leaves that hang, wind-shaken and sun-kissed, 
from the outermost branches that reach toward the 
sky. Sever the connection and you stop the flow and 
end the life. The very forces which,. before the sev- 
erance, were invigorating and developing become de- 
structive. The sunlight now scorches and withers, 
and the moisture in the air and soil rots the plant into 
unorganized dust again. 

145 



146 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

There lias been established a vital union between 
not only the different parts of an organism but also 
between the organism and its environment, the in- 
gredients of the soil, the air, the raindrop, and the 
sunbeam — severance here being attended with equally 
fatal results. The central germ-force reaches with 
vitalizing influence to the remotest corner of the 
organism, directing where every particle of matter 
shall go and precisely what office it shall perform in 
perfecting the embodiment of the divine ideal in- 
trusted to its keeping. There is thus an interplay, an 
interdependence, binding together not only the dif- 
ferent parts of an organism, but the clod of the valley 
with the cloud of the sky, even reaching through 
space the almost inconceivable distance of ninety-five 
millions of miles. 

A more perfect and complex organization may be 
observed in the higher realm of animal life. Not 
only is every body, whether of mote or mammoth, an 
organized whole, a combination of parts by whose 
joint action a certain predetermined purpose is car- 
ried out, but each organ also in the combination is 
made up of interdependent parts, each differently 
endowed and commissioned and having significance 
and efficiency only when conjoined with the others 
into one harmonious whole. The human eye, for 
example, has been found composed of hundreds of 
such complemental parts, some of the more noticeable 
being a self-adjusting window, carefully curved and 
accurately placed lenses, an elaborately prepared 
plate, susceptible of the slightest impression, consist- 
ing of a closely woven network of the frayed ends of 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 147 

the optic nerve, oil and tear glands, sets of minute 
muscles "to roll the balls and lift the lids with their 
fringed edges, and change the curvature of the 
crystalline lens. These have evidently been built 
with reference each to each, as only by a concert of 
action can they effect an outlook to the spirit housed 
within. In this highly organized body of ours we 
find the brain in such close telegraphic communica- 
tion with every fiber of flesh that nowhere, over the 
wide area which the skin covers, can even the fine 
point of a cambric needle find entrance without a 
message of warning being flashed over the wires to 
the central office. Along the motor nerves the will 
reaches, with its mandates, thousands of waiting mus- 
cles in that vast army that lies encamped throughout 
its kingdom. 

The vital organs are also most closely conjoined, 
and are constantly sending out, along canals that ram- 
ify everywhere, rich cargoes of vitalized atoms, that, 
under the supervision of the all-dominant, organizing 
central force, are incorporated into muscle and bone, 
tendon and nerve-fiber, cuticle, cord, cartilage, and 
brain tissue. Here, too, break the union, and you 
end the life. Any part of the body wrenched from 
this quickening contact with the controlling germ- 
power soon falls a prey to the ever- waiting, hungry 
hordes of chemical forces, which tear it in pieces and 
despoil it of its glory. 

And, also, between every animal organism and its 
environment there must be maintained an equally 
constant union, or life will cease. It seems to be the 
special, if not sole, office of those marvelous animal 



148 0LD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

instincts, which are unquestionably none other than a 
divine informing, to promote and regulate this union 
as God first planned it. 

This scheme of organization, which we find to 
prevail thus universally in these lowest kingdoms of 
vegetable and animal existences, has been discovered 
to be equally dominant in the higher realms of self- 
conscious thought and of moral choices. Careful 
grouping of parts, the widely reaching centralization 
of purpose and of power, is here as unmistakably 
present and as ineradicable. For example, our powers 
of reasoning and reflection can not be exercised with- 
out the aid of the memory, for we must be able to 
recall and retain former conceptions in order to pass 
our thoughts in review, institute comparisons, draw 
inferences, reach conclusions ; and for the exercise 
of the memory the imagination is indispensable, for 
we must picture whatever past incident or idea we 
recover to consciousness. The imagination must have, 
as its ready servitors, the mind's powers of associa- 
tion and suggestion, of comparison and contrast, 
and of memory, for its office is not to create out- 
right, but to fashion new combinations, selecting its 
material from former perceptions and experiences. 
Thus the mind acts as a unit, thought being the 
result of a combined operation of its faculties. -As 
the brain is the instrument used in all thought-pro- 
cesses, and as all crude thought-material must come 
through the five bodily senses, the union of the in- 
tellectual world with the physical is also close and 
constant, and the deeply laid plan of organization in 
the one leaves its indelible impress on the other, is 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 149 

fairly inwrought into its very structure, so that the 
two may safely be considered parts of a still wider 
organization, all of whose vast multitude of members 
are in vital union with each other and with some 
central Over-Soul, its author and organizing spirit. 

This union has been found to extend still further, 
linking mind with mind, each individual endowment 
of personality being essential to the healthful and 
efficient exercise and unfolding of the others, each 
having its peculiar fashioning with reference to this 
world-wide relationship. Here, too, the penalty of 
severance is death. This was not known until re- 
vealed by quite recent results of State-prison dis- 
cipline. Solitary cell confinement has so uniformly 
ended in hopeless insanity or idiocy that the authori- 
ties have felt compelled to abandon this mode of 
punishment. While occasional solitude serves as a 
tonic and regulator, as a positive medicine to the 
mind, it will, if obstinately persisted in, turn into 
deadly poison. We must maintain communication 
with the ever-flowing thought-currents of the world 
and of Nature, must never suffer to wholly cease 
within us that beat of pulse which is but God's 
beat of heart, by whose mighty enginery the world's 
thought-arteries are fed with a divine vitality. This 
fact of a world-organism is brought out still further, 
and with ever-increasing emphasis, in the unmistak- 
able drift of modern civilization toward a more 
intimate and organized interplay of all individual 
forces in society, as may be noted in the increased 
facilities for travel and for interchange of thought, 
the multiplication of machinery, closer combinations 



150 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

of industries, the formation of great trusts and co- 
operative associations, the international federations 
for reform and for the forwarding of the researches 
of science. The Duke of Argyll, in his Eeign of 
Law, but more recently in his work on The Unity 
of Nature, has presented certain phases of it with 
great learning and force. "Walter Bagehot has at- 
tempted to show the extension of natural law to the 
political world ; Herbert Spencer, its application to 
the social ; and Prof. Henry Drummond, its reach- 
ing up even into the spiritual life of the soul. 

The fact that we are parts of one vast, closely 
linked organism in our intellectual as well as our 
physical nature is again made evident whenever we 
attempt to develop any theme of thought. "We work 
most effectively when we place ourselves as far as we 
can in a receptive frame, freeing our minds from all 
trammels of passion and preconceived opinion, being 
resolved to know only the truth and fearlessly to 
state and stand by it, then inform ourselves as to all 
discovered pertinent facts, institute original investi- 
gations when possible, search through Nature, among 
the world's libraries, its customs, industries, its re- 
ligions, political and social institutions, its exhibits of 
art, all the multiform phenomena of its ever-vary- 
ing life, and after having thus thrown open every 
avenue of approach, place ourselves in closest vital 
union with the thought-movements of the planet and 
through them with the God of the planet, the great 
central thought-source, and having thus become fairly 
alive with our theme, quickened and filled, we hold 
our attention unswervingly to the subject of our 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 151 

purposed contemplation, and suffer our mental facul- 
ties to evolve their thought-products according to 
the methods predetermined by their Creator. Our 
minds are, we shall find, most consummately con- 
structed pieces of mechanism, with most complicate 
yet most nicely adjusted parts, working with as per- 
fect regularity as characterizes the processes of 
vegetable or animal growths. All we have to do — 
all, in fact, we can do — is to provide them with this 
fitting environment, this proper spiritual sustenance, 
and then hold fast the attention. God does the rest, 
we know not how. The mystery is as profound as 
that which envelops the unfolding of an acorn into a 
thousand-armed, million -leafed oak, or of the appar- 
ently structureless white of an egg into a plumed 
songster. The environment is instinct with divine 
life ; the constructive mental germ-force is the prod- 
uct of a divine quickening ; the processes have been 
determined by a divine order. To us is intrusted 
simply the choosing of the departments of thought 
in which they shall work their wonders. It is im- 
possible for us to stop the unfolding of thought or to 
change the laws of the unfolding. We simply have 
directive power, and power to throw wide open all 
mental avenues, and keep up all necessary vital 
unions with this vast world-organism, of which we 
form part. We plant, we water, but God gives the 
increase. Thoughts spring up into consciousness, and 
unfold finally into flower and fruit, in strict con- 
formity to methods and models devised in the in- 
scrutable councils of the Almighty. As spiritual 
chemists we may exercise a choice as to the ingre- 



152 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

a- «. of the solution, but along what lines of 

Itrv the precipitated thoughts shall arrange 

Eel ^l P aepL on pre-established laws of 

themselves w t - ^ are ermlt ted 



God's begins. happily illustrates 

"Dr Carpenter cites a fact that napp j 

em inent mathematuuan one ^^ ' b . 

temp ted the —on rf. *£■ ^ ^ ^ 
lem, without success, -tie 

M1 fTh^ W "S. "fi Iched, hut 

himself for a time with Ins pape-, and «* studie8 , 
The next morning, when about to ~e ^ 

he found to his astonishment a 1 themjs 

^rtti^Si he found, 
before hnn, and ^ bs g fa ^ ^^ 

r Tof's' ep accomplished what, while he was 

1 ^ f 6 Vthf miudO-ntmg to it what- 
011S P^l^jiU eluded my grasp m 
ever subject peipiexeu u r^wer, and 

a8 clear and forcible a hght as ^uXwhere -ith 
then deliberately tumng my attentaonelse^ 

the intent, after au mterval had &p d g 

calling up the ^t" Jh Sany couscious effort 
found that the mind has, witnoui * j 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 153 

on my part, in some secret and silent way, with 
clarified vision and unwonted concentrative energy, 
performed most difficult tasks without any discov- 
erable fatigue or friction. There is rarely a person 
that has not had frequent and pleasant surprises of 
this sort. They are genuine surprises to most, be- 
cause the existence of these mental laws is not gen- 
erally known, and a deliberate attempt to thus turn 
them to account is a rare occurrence. People gen- 
erally puzzle and study until, in a fit of discourage- 
ment or pressed by other cares, they toss the themes 
aside, only to find afterward, upon some chance re- 
currence, the much-coveted prizes fairly thrust upon 
them, coming out of their hiding places like sudden 
flashes of intuition, though unquestionably they are 
the result of long processes of unconscious ratioci- 
nation. 

On one occasion I had revealed to me with what 
lightning speed the mind works when thus left un- 
trammeled in its organic action. I had made quite 
laborious preparation to write a character-analysis of 
a certain literary celebrity. I had read what I could 
find on the subject and had taken quite extensive 
notes of facts and suggestions. I had also jotted 
down whatever had come up in my own reflections 
from time to time, without regard to order, without 
any plan of treatment. After I had thus gathered 
my material I set myself to the task of evolving order 
out of this wild chaos. After long study I could dis- 
cover only one line of treatment that to me seemed 
at all possible, and still with that I was quite dissatis- 
fied. I finally shut my desk, heartily discouraged, 



154 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

and began some vigorous manual exercise, leaving my 
mind seemingly in a state of vacuity, of absolute rest. 
To my utter astonishment and delight, while still 
swinging my axe, a hitherto entirely unthought-of plan 
flashed upon me. It came wholly unbidden, for I 
had not then learned of this unconscious automatic 
mental action. The plan proved to be precisely what 
I needed. 

I have had recourse frequently to the same 
methods, when desirous of recalling any past thing or 
thought. 

The fact of our being parts of a wide-reaching 
organism again becomes manifest when persons of 
reflective, studious habits have taken a careful review 
of their thought-history, for they find that it pos- 
sesses a very noticeable symmetry and system, and 
that too without any conscious purposing on their 
part. The mind when left free to work naturally 
and healthily will fall into methods which are the 
outgrowth of its peculiar organic structure, its en- 
vironment being assimilated and transformed into it. 

An analysis of the works of great literary geniuses 
will confirm this statement. The minds that are the 
most gifted will be found to be those of greatest 
intuitive power, in closest sympathetic communica- 
tion with Nature and the great throbbing intellectual 
life of the world ; those that are characterized most 
by this unconscious action, and untrammeled by con- 
ventionalisms, and unawed by public opinion; that 
stand loyal to their own individuality, and independ- 
ently assert what they candidly believe to be true. 
Such are pre-eminently divinely led, because they 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 155 

implicitly trust in and follow the promptings of a 
nature divinely bestowed. They may not be devout, 
may not design to be under divine leadership or 
realize that they are. They are simply healthily sclf- 
reliairt and self -asserting, candid, impressionable, as- 
similative. They are something more than echoes of 
their age, for their large susceptibility is accompanied 
with equally large assimilative capacity, and their 
strong natures vitalize and transmute their intellectual 
environment into finer forms of spiritual essence, into 
their own unique personality. But this transmuta- 
tion is wholly an unconscious process, under the con- 
duct of divine methods and instrumentalities. They 
simply follow out the promptings of their instinctive 
impulses, or, as we are wont to phrase it, follow the 
bent of their own genius. 

Shakespeare is a notable illustration of this. It is 
universally conceded that his was one of the most 
original, creative minds ever placed on this planet. 
Yet he so little realized his peerless powers that he 
used them simply for purposes of livelihood, and 
when a competence was secured he left the London 
playhouses, retired to his estate at Stratford-on-Avon 
and was so unconcerned about his fame, so careless of 
his manuscripts, that he left them scattered about the 
theaters, and it was not till some time after his death 
that two appreciative friends collected what of them 
they could find and identify, and handed them over 
to literary immortality, to be the delight and wonder 
of all nations in all succeeding centuries. He was 
not a product of the schools, yet he seems to have 
been wonderfully conversant with literature and with 



156 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

the living thought of his age, so great were his 
absorbent powers. His conceptions took on dramatic 
form, for that was the one then generally prevailing. 
He was the glory, the consummate flower, of the 
Elizabethan era, his pages glowing with the en- 
thusiasm of its literary renascence, with its bright 
awakening from the darkness and thrall with which 
the bigotry of the Eomish Church had cursed the 
middle ages. The Bible had under Henry YIII 
been unchained, and the world's rich stores of classic 
learning broken open and again made free to all. He 
drank in the spirit of his time as naturally and freely 
as his lungs filled with the air about him. This 
quickened spiritual pulse of old England beat strong 
and full in Shakespeare's veins. The breadth of his 
knowledge, the depth of his insight, the intuitional 
quickness of his perceptions, the exuberance of his 
fancy, were excelled only by the outspoken, unstudied 
naturalness with which his thoughts burst into bloom 
and filled the world with their fragrance. He surely 
had no purpose of building up a system of philoso- 
phy; he never dreamed that his dramas had any 
connection with each other, yet a keen critic of to-day 
has shown us that they are actually bound together in 
close organic union, that Shakespeare " builded better 
than he knew," was as profound a philosopher as he 
was gifted poet. I once expressed to this commen- 
tator great incredulity as to the soundness of his in- 
terpretation, remarking that he had seemingly in- 
jected into these writings his own thought-life, had 
displayed his own fertility of invention, but he 
stoutly contended, and, I found after more careful 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 15 f 

reflection, contended with good reason, that Shake- 
speare did actually, though unconsciously, construct 
and illustrate a most profound system of philosophy ; 
that his dramas, so far from standing alone as utter- 
ances of wholly disassociated moods, were comple- 
mental parts of one grand organum. 

This writer told me further that he believed he 
had discovered a still wider generalization, and had 
nearly ready for the press an extensive work, reach- 
ing through seven or eight volumes, on The Four 
Literary Gospels, in which he maintains that Homer, 
Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe, the great apostles 
of the world's literature, have embodied in their pro- 
ductions the four great stages of the world's intel- 
lectual evolution, and should be considered together 
as component parts of one vast world-system of 
thought— so vast that long centuries of world history 
have been required for its full unfolding and em- 
bodiment. 

Do we not see here the stately steppings of 
Divinity? Is there not here all the consummate 
regularity of organic action, all the oneness of plan 
we note m the unfolding through time of an amorphic 
bank of cosmic vapor into a peopled planet ? 

_ If we extend our inquiries into the phenomena of 
spiritual life, we shall also find evidences everywhere 
of this same most thorough organization, the different 
parts constructed with a view to concert of action, 
under the directive control of some central organizing 
power with which they are all vitally joined. The 
most cursory glance will reveal that our spiritual ex- 
periences are but the outgrowth of our multiform and 



158 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

intimate relationships. Indeed, it seems that it was 
for just such glorious consummation of moral char- 
acter, of healthful individuality, that all this marvel- 
ous system within system was at the first devised. 

On close inspection it will be found that all the 
virtues are but the protean forms of a single attitude 
of the soul, that of self -forgetting sympathy. It is 
this which, as I have shown elsewhere, "knits to- 
gether friends, endears home circles, incites philan- 
thropy, fires the breasts of patriots, and consecrates 
the Cross." 

When this feeling prevails, a unity of purpose 
binds together the widest diversities of gifts. Friends 
find themselves halves of one whole, and become 
mutually helpful, supplying by their complemental 
parts each other's lack, inspiriting and consecrating 
each other's efforts and aspirations. Souls in an en- 
vironment of unselfish love flow together in obedience 
to laws of spiritual affinity as exact and inexorable as 
those which control in the chemical unions which are 
effected in Nature's laboratory. The differently en- 
dowed and tempered members of a household, being 
once imbued with this spirit, find their place as readily 
and inevitably as do the crystallizing particles of some 
solution. Led by a central organizing force, they 
follow lines of social and spiritual symmetry as math- 
ematically exact and as divinely predetermined as 
those which fix the contours of crystals. They soon 
discover that they are as vitally joined to each other, 
and to some central directing power, as are the parts 
of a plant or the members of an intricately constructed 
animal organism. Families are combined into com- 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 159 

munities, and communities into commonwealths, in 
unsuspecting obedience to similar laws of divine order. 
Just so soon as this vital love-union ceases, the several 
souls sink into spiritual disintegration and death. As 
diseases of the body mark a partial severance, so petty 
jealousies and heartburns and pride, the changing of 
generous emulations into covert, selfish ambitions, 
outcroppings of sharp criticisms, a spirit of greed, a 
love of display— all indicate a partial severance, a pro- 
cess of devitalization which, unless arrested, will end 
in death. So many of earth's friendships, family 
circles, and commonwealths have fallen prey to these 
disintegrating forces of selfishness that we can not 
turn our eyes to any age or clime without finding the 
plains strewn thick with their bleaching skeletons. 
The truth that voluntary, unsympathetic isolation, 
even under the most favorable circumstances, will 
uniformly end in lamentable spiritual disaster, has 
been proclaimed in burning words by Tennyson in his 
Palace of Art. To illustrate and enforce it, this fore- 
most poet of the age placed under tribute his finest 
pictorial power. He built for the hermit soul a 
lordly pleasure-house, looking out on a landscape 
full of most entrancing beauty, looking in on open 
courts where fountains leaped and murmured, with 
walls hung with speaking canvas fit for every mood 
and change of thought, with marble-carved forms of 
angels far overhead among its spanning arches, with 
rich mosaics underfoot choicely planned into suggest- 
ive pictures of the past, with apartments redolent 
with choicest perfumes and echoing with silver notes 
of self -swung bells. Here for three years, with every 



160 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

bodily want, every aesthetic craving, satisfied, away 
from the turmoils and troubles of earthly human life, 
this seemingly highly favored soul throve and pros- 
pered in her isolation. 
But 

" on the fourth she fell, 
Like Herod, when the shout was in his ears, 
Struck thro' with pangs of hell. 

" Lest she should fail and perish utterly, 
God, before whom ever lie bare 
The abysmal depths of Personality, 
Plagued her with sore despair. 

" When she would think, where'er she turned her sight, 
The airy hand confusion wrought, 
Wrote ' Mene, mene,' and divided quite 
The kingdom of her thought. 

" Deep dread and loathing of her solitude 
Fell on her." 

From out dark corners in her palace-home phan- 
tasms glared, nightmare shapes appeared, and black- 
ened corpses. She seemed to herself shut up as in a 
crumbling tomb. At last 

" She threw her royal robes away, 

' Make me a cottage in the vale,' she said, 
' Where I may mourn and pray.' " 

With this vital, sympathetic touch with our fellows — 
without which we can do nothing, enjoy no spiritual 
health, make no spiritual progress — there at once be- 
comes operative the law of spiritual assimilation, 
which has the same divine origin, and is as inexorable, 
as the laws that control in chemical combinations of 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. Uft 

affinitive molecules. Companions whose inner spir- 
itual lives commingle, inevitably grow into each 
other's likeness, the stronger nature producing the 
deeper, more lasting spiritual impressment. 

There is no influence in the world that will at all 
compare in potency with this of personal presence. 
Indeed, all others combined are outweighed by it. 
Every soul which secures to itself spiritual vigor and 
enlargement will be found to be intimately linked 
with stronger and nobler natures, out from which 
course currents of irresistible, vitalizing power. From 
our cradles, by the very instincts of our being, we be- 
come hero-worshipers, and our hearts' heroes are the 
molders and masters of our hearts. Some personal 
presence, then, without and above humanity, must be 
in vital contact with it, to insure to the world per- 
manent moral elevation. A chain of influences must 
reach up to God's throne. Otherwise, by this very 
spiritual law we have announced, the whole race 
would soon sink into a state of spiritual equilibrium, 
the lowest and the highest finally meeting on a com- 
mon level. Whatever of spiritual life the world pos- 
sesses to-day must have come originally from this 
divine source, and human companionships have been 
but channels of its dissemination. The fact that the 
human race has made moral progress through the 
centuries can be explained only on the ground that it 
has been blessed with divine companionship. That 
it has not made far greater progress is clearly charge- 
able to a voluntary failure fully to avail itself of this 
most inestimable privilege. Spiritual deterioration in 
individual lives because of this withdrawal from God's 



162 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

proffered presence is, alas! too frequent to require 
any confirmation. Not a single instance can be cited, 
either in individual or national history, of the develop- 
ing of the supposed inherent promise and potency of 
spiritual life without tins divine environment. The 
Duke of Argyll has, in his Primeval Man, challenged 
evolutionists to prove that any people has ever risen 
out of savagery into civilization without being incited 
and helped to it by influences from without. 

To develop the Godlikeness in human souls 
through this very law of spiritualization, what more 
effective way could be devised than to have a God- 
man enter human history ? To bring the divine heart 
into closer sympathetic relation with men, to present 
incontestable evidences of God's loving estimate of 
man's infinite possibilities, of his longing to enter into 
closer intimacy with these his cherished children, an 
Immanuel must come, and by thus transfusing his 
own spirit he would transform theirs. As soon as 
they permit his tears and smiles to mingle with theirs, 
clasp his hand of friendly greeting, open with glad 
welcome the door of their hearts as he stands waiting, 
look into his face radiant with a self -forgetting love, 
listen to his voice as, in tones gentle and winning as a 
mother's, it asks, as it speaks their name, "Lovest 
thou me ? " — then, but not till then, will their spirits 
begin to thrill with that divine vitality that has in it 
the power of an endless life. 

Thus we can see how firmly based on the deep 
principles of this world-organism would be his warn- 
ing that without him we can do nothing, as also 
his promise that with him we can do all things, that 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 1 63 

he is the vine and we the branches, and that we 
must abide in him if we would have life and bear 
fruit. These utterances of the historic Christ were 
bold and startling. If he was mere man, they were 
blasphemous; if God, then profoundly true, for 
under this law of spiritual assimilation no spiritual 
blessing within the range of our asking lies without 
the reach of his giving. Even the feeblest and least 
gifted rise, under the influences of such a companion- 
ship, into the fullness of his stature. 

This statement is so astounding that it is difficult, 
well-nigh impossible, for us to realize or credit it ; 
but we shall find ourselves wonderfully reassured if 
we note the well-nigh limitless capacity for being 
uplifted possessed by everything God has made, and 
the power to uplift bestowed upon the various forces 
he has commissioned to bring finally into full per- 
fection the embodiment of his creative thought. In 
an Oriental proverb we find the conception of this 
divine plan crystallized into a gem worthy to be worn 
in the crown of our rejoicing : " I was but common 
clay till roses were planted in me." Into this sen- 
tence is compressed the profoundest philosophy of 
all the ages. We may use it as a Eosetta Stone to 
decipher the many mysterious hieroglyphs written on 
the world's walls by the finger of God. I still watch 
with wonderment and awe the unfolding phenomena 
of the vegetable world. These tiny architectural art- 
ists of Nature are enveloped in such unfathomable 
mystery. Their mantles of invisibility are never un- 
clasped. Their deft fingers move as noiselessly as 
sunbeams. Their lips are as mute as the lips of the 



164: OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

dead. Yet without confusion, without hesitancy, 
without mistake, they transform amorphic matter into 
symmetries and tints and flavors and perfumes that 
become to us speaking symbols of God's love. Out 
from the foul stagnancy of the marsh a lily lifts its 
pure white lips to receive the kisses of the sun. 
What delicacy of fragrance, grace of form, charm of 
color, fineness of texture, marvelous etherealization 
of gross substances, evidencing the well-nigh limitless 
uplifting power of this divinely commissioned germ- 
fairy that has been sent into this most unpromising 
part of God's kingdom ! Similar miracle workings 
fill the earth ; indeed, as the modern microscope dis- 
closes, the capacities of matter for refinement are 
practically infinite. 

Animal germs take these same gross elements 
after they have been thus uplifted by the vegetable, 
and carry them still higher, even to the very border- 
land of spirits, weaving them at last into a veil of so 
ethereal a texture that sometimes, in privileged mo- 
ments, we catch glimpses through it, we are well- 
nigh persuaded, of the spirits themselves of our 
loved ones, for the human face at times seems not 
only to reflect, in its mobile features, changing colors, 
flitting fights and shadows, the thought-life within, 
but to be suffused with some strange preternatural 
radiance, that suggests the outshining of the glory 
tints of the soul, of the halo of its very essence. 

So universally prevalent throughout Nature are 
these displays of matter's capacity for being uplifted 
that only those peculiarly gifted with poetic perennial 
freshness of thought and reverent interpretative in- 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. ^5 

sight are properly impressed with the deep signifi- 
cance of promise and of prophecy they possess for 
every one of ns. 

We are taught, not only thus by the marvelous 
movements of life below us, but by the whole course 
of life about us, forming the incidents of the world's 
individual and national histories, that if we come into 
vital union with spirits superior, live in their personal 
presence, thrill to their talismanic touch, bask in the 
sunshine of their sympathy, we shall grow into spirit- 
ual exaltations of purpose that will eventually ripen 
into permanent traits of character of whose possi- 
bility of development we before had never dreamed. 
Let the seed of Christ's divine love be planted 
within us, and the common clay of our natures, that 
would have forever remained but common clay were 
it not for this union, will under its magical power be 
uplifted and transformed into roses whose graces of 
form, of tint, and of perfume will win for us by and 
by glad welcome into the paradise of God. 

Thus we see that the advent of just such a per- 
sonage as the Christ of the Gospels was absolutely 
essential to consummate the plan of organization 
divinely purposed from the beginning; that just 
such a spiritually vitalizing influence was needed to 
be infused into individual experiences to prevent the 
whole fabric, so elaborately built through the long 
centuries, from falling into wreck. This unmistak- 
able necessity of the coming of a God-man, living 
such a life of loving self-sacrifice, making such a 
revelation of the yearning sympathy of the divine 
heart, coming into such vital union with waiting 



163 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

souls, contains in itself the sure promise of Ms 
coming and testifies that the historic Christ is the 
veritable Christ of prophecy. 

The necessity which scientific inquiry has dis- 
closed of this quickening touch to thus complete 
God's vast plan of world-organism reveals to us 
Christ's place in Nature. It was not that his sacrifice 
was essential to satisfy the demands of a broken law, 
to pay its penalty so as to render possible and safe 
God's forgiveness and man's reinstatement — such a 
thought finding no warrant, so far as I can see, either 
in science or sound philosophy— but to work such 
change in human hearts, exert over them such en- 
nobling infiuenees, reach out with such tender, life- 
giving sympathies, as to win men back to loving 
obedience, and thus fit them for the forgiveness God 
is ever anxiously waiting to bestow upon the repent- 
ant and believing. 

Science in thus discovering the indispensable need 
of such a work witnesses to the reasonableness of the 
Christian's faith in the divinity of his Lord. 



III. 

By following out an entirely different line of in- 
quiry, I find that this selfsame necessity for the 
coming of a God-man becomes manifest, and that 
science thus witnesses a second time, and with added 
emphasis, to the reasonableness of the Christian's 
creed. 

^ There is no theme of such universal interest about 
which there is so much confusion of thought as that 
of the nature of real liberty and the conditions of 
its maintenance. There is a multitude of forces of 
widely different orders at work in the world. We 
can not see them, and we know absolutely nothing of 
their real nature, and are made aware of their ex- 
istence only by certain effects produced on matter. 
Experiment has disclosed that under certain condi- 
tions there follow certain effects. Both are uniform 
and unchangeable. The forces lie inert and hidden 
until the precise conditions are reached, and then 
work unswervingly in accordance with certain pre- 
established laws of their being. To set a force free, 
then, is simply to fulfill certain conditions, and thus 
remove whatever hinders it from rendering in its 
thus awakened energy an implicit obedience to the 
laws established over it. We can not free it from 

167 



1G8 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

such laws, and it manifests neither power nor dis- 
position to free itself, to mold matter into any dif- 
ferent form or for any different purpose than that 
prescribed in its divine commission. Between the 
particles of water, for example, we can discover no 
cohesive attraction or bat the slightest ; yet remove 
a given amount of heat that now holds this force 
bound and hidden, and it will spring at once into full 
activity, and the water will become a block of solid 
ice. Another force, and a marvelous one, also makes 
its appearance. Those particles not only cohere but 
are arranged in set patterns along predetermined 
lines of symmetry, forming geometrical figures of 
great beauty and exactness. In the forms of snow- 
flakes we recognize a divine fineness of touch an,d 
flawless finish. The crystalline architect just as often 
as its delicate frost palaces are torn down will build 
them again untiringly after precisely the same models 
and under precisely the same conditions, so prompt is 
its obedience to law, so unswerving its fidelity to the 
plans and specifications intrusted to it by the Great 
Master Builder. 

Pass that water as vapor through a heated tube of 
platinum, and the water will be at once resolved into 
its original hydrogen and oxygen gases, and another 
force still— one of repulsion— will bound into being, 
and so Titanic is it that you will fail to crowd the in- 
finitesimal atoms of these gases together again though 
you apply twenty tons' pressure to the square inch. 
But touch them with fire, and they will fly back 
into each other's chemical embrace instantly, and be- 
come water, as before. 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 169 

We thus see that to free any of the lower forces 
is not to release them from law, but simply from 
what prevents them from acting in strictest obe- 
dience to the laws which have been established over 
them. 

We shall find the same principles holding true in 
the history of other and higher forms of force. In- 
side the walls of a seed lies concealed a germ-fairy 
which remains inert, a chained captive, until defi- 
nitely prescribed conditions are complied with. 
Place that seed in the proper environment, surround 
it with dew, air, soil, and sunlight, and those prison 
walls burst asunder, and out of the crude material 
which Nature furnishes the awakened and freed 
force constructs for itself, with an architectural skill 
that is marvelous in our eyes, a charming palace 
home — it may be the pure white chalice of a lily, or 
the richly tinted and perfumed petals of a rose, or 
the stalwart, storm-defying form of a forest oak. 
There is such perfection in its work, such profundity 
of thought in it, that we recognize at once that it is 
carrying out plans not of its own contriving, but 
matured in the deep councils of Jehovah. To set it 
free is simply to remove whatever hinders it from 
energizing in ways predetermined for it, from strictly 
obeying the laws of organization that pertain to its 
special sphere of work. It is never restive under 
divine command. We mortals can never tempt it, 
nor can we drive it into disobedience. The germ- 
force inside an apple seed will never fashion for us a 
grapevine or a sunflower, but a tree rather of a 
species like that which bore it. That tree will, 



170 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

through successive growing seasons, throw out its 
banners of leaves and add branch to branch, and 
then, when the time is ripe, burst into bloom and at 
last bend its boughs with fruit golden with the rich 
colorings of autumnal sunset skies. Through just 
such faithful re-embodiments by law-abiding forces 
have God's creative thoughts been transmitted in all 
their freshness down the long lapse of ages. 

It will be further observed that this germinal 
force, if it would accomplish its purposes — would be 
set free and kept free — must not only be placed in 
its proper environment, but be absolute master of all 
the under forces that can in any way either help 
or hinder it in its work. It lifts its material right 
against the force of gravity, fifty, one hundred, two 
hundred feet into mid-air, and then summons the 
force of cohesion to hold it there, in some instances 
for long centuries together. In its laboratory, the 
leaf, it takes a sunbeam, and with it tears in pieces 
carbonic dioxide — the most stable chemical compound 
known to science — reversing the process of com- 
bustion. When you burn coal in your grate, the 
carbon of the coal and the oxygen of the air unite 
and cling together with so firm a grasp that to tear 
them apart again the chemist must employ the most 
powerful agents, carry on the processes in his 
strongest vessels under most startling manifestations 
of light and heat, and at the last bar and bolt the 
refractory oxygen in a strong prison by itself. That 
the vegetative force accomplishes this in each one of 
the thousand diminutive and delicate cells of a single 
leaf, taking the carbon for its own use and restoring 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 17^ 

the oxygen to the air, demonstrates to us how ab- 
solute is its sovereignty over the under forces that 
enter into the borders of its kingdom. Its freedom, 
indeed its very life, is found to depend upon this 
sovereignty, for the very moment it relaxes its hold 
they rise in mad riot and, like communists, proceed 
to tear down into shapeless heaps of dull dust again 
the very glory-touched palace they have been forced 
to construct and maintain. 

. If we extend our inquiry into the phenomena of 
animal vitality, we shall find that liberty means the 
same, is won and held in precisely the same way. 
Within the shell of an egg, as within the walls of a 
seed, a germ-force lies hidden. To arouse it and set 
it free the egg must be kept at a predetermined 
temperature and for a predetermined period. These 
conditions none but He who prescribed them has 
power to change. When the time is up, the shell 
cracks open, and out steps a wondrously organized 
living creature fashioned by the germ-force out of a 
mass of seemingly structureless jelly. 

There is such perfection in its work, such wealth 
of contrivance, such profound knowledge of this com- 
plicate world, such clear vision of prophecy, we can 
but conclude that within its tiny windowless work- 
shop it has been strictly following out the instructions 
of a Divine Master, that it has been free simply to 
render implicit obedience to divine law. And in its 
subsequent history we learn, also, that it remains free 
to follow out further the divine plan only on con- 
dition that it maintains a mastery over the under 
forces; that these forces are- hostile to it, and will 

\2i 



172 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

perform their new strange tasks only so long as they 
are held down by the strong arm of a master. There 
must be no divided throne, no toleration of insurgents. 
The vital force must reign throughout the body with- 
out a rival, or it will be trammeled in its action and 
eventually pushed out of being. So soon as food 
enters our bodies and is set flowing through certain 
appointed channels, it is made to undergo gradual 
vitalization. As it passes through the mouth into the 
stomach, then through the duodenum and down the 
smaller intestines, different solvents are poured in 
upon it— saliva, gastric juice, bile, pancreatic fluid, 
and mucus secretions. Whatever stubbornly refuses 
to dissolve under their influence is at once carried 
further on and expelled from the system. The re- 
mainder is taken up into hairlike tubes called the 
lacteals, and by them emptied into the thoracic duct, 
thence carried through the aorta to the heart. This 
great force pump, after first sending it to the lungs 
for oxidation, distributes it, now thrilled with vital 
power, along the widely branching arterial courses 
everywhere, far and near, to replenish bone and 
muscle and cartilage and tendon and nerve fiber ; for 
every time we move, every time we evolve a thought, 
we break down some tissue, and its waste must be 
made good from the nutritive principles in the blood. 
Every atom that thus loses its vitality, that has been 
wrested from the grasp of the organizing force and 
has fallen under the sway of the under chemical 
forces, must be driven out, or pyaemia— blood poison- 
ing—will ensue ; and if any local insurrection is not 
promptly put down, it will widen into revolution, and 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. I73 

eventually end in death. To effect this expulsion, the 
body is interlaced with a network of canals, called 
lymphatics, forming an internal, decomposing, ab- 
sorbent system,. some of which empty into the great 
veins; but vast multitudes open their discharging 
mouths at once on the surface of the skin, three 
thousand to every square inch, so essential is it to 
afford ready and swift exit to whatever the organizing 
force can no longer control. 

If we pursue further our investigations, and enter 
the region of animal instinct, so full of the marvelous, 
we find the same general principles prevailing. Lib- 
erty is secured and maintained in precisely the same 
way. Animals are born specialists. Their mental 
and bodily furnishings are complemental and specific. 
The sphere of each is a narrow one, but it knows 
precisely what to do and how to do it, and has just 
the tools to do it with. When a bee, for example, 
sallies forth from its cradle, it is provided with a full 
business outfit— wax pouch, pollen basket, honey 
stomach, trowel-shaped mandibles, a tireless wing, a 
discriminating and most powerful scent, and com- 
plete working plans for those hexagonal storage cells 
that in point of capacity and economy of wax and 
strength of wall bear the most searching test of the 
differential calculus. There is not a creature that is 
not either equipped with some peculiar organ or with 
some organ peculiarly modified, accompanied with a 
correspondingly peculiar instinctive impulse for using 
it. The impulse and the organ are but complemental 
parts of a single plan, and that plan divine. The 
thinking has been done for the creature, not ly it. 



174 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

Should it step outside its prescribed circle, fail to 
follow the lead of its instinct, it would become a help- 
less prey to hostile forces, its only strength and safety 
and real freedom being found in strict obedience to 
the laws of its organism. Should it not do what God 
has appointed in God's prescribed way, in God's 
chosen time, and with the tools God has himself fur- 
nished, it would become the helpless slave of circum- 
stance and meet with certain aud swift destruction. 

Let us now direct our inquiry to our own complex 
spiritual life of meditations, sensibilities, and moral 
choices, and see of what liberty consists, how it can 
be obtained, and how in these highest known forms 
of force it can be made a permanent possession. 

When man stepped upon the scene I believe there 
was a radically new departure in creation; that he 
came endowed with that of which before there was 
only a semblance, a dim prophecy, on the earth ; that 
to him alone was vouchsafed self -consciousness, the 
clear light of reason, perfect freedom of choice, moral 
discernment, and a sense of accountability. These, 
however, are but superadded gifts, for man is closely 
linked with all the lower forces, forms part of the 
same general plan we have been considering, indeed 
was designed in the divine councils to be its grand 
culmination. Note the features of this plan, first in 
the nature and history of the soul's meditations. We 
find that certain predetermined conditions must be 
fulfilled before the currents of living thought are set 
free from their fountains, for, through one or more 
of the five senses, communication must be opened 
with the outside physical and mental worlds. This 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 175 

done, the mind thus awakened and liberated, its sub- 
sequent activity is, as we have already shown, as 
rigidly regular as that of the chemical or crystalline 
or germ-forces already considered, the processes being 
carried on under a system of unchangeable laws 
divinely established, the prerogative of the human 
will reaching solely to the choice of themes, to the 
selection of the fields of labor. There is no other 
liberty of choice than this, and even this depends for 
its maintenance on the control exercised over the 
under forces, upon the healthful condition of the 
delicate tissues of the brain and all the other bodily 
organs that are linked with it, and upon the degree of 
moderation secured among that eager throng of 
appetites, passions, and propensities which, for far- 
reaching moral purposes, have been placed in our 
keeping. We have found upon experiment that we 
are wholly powerless to stop the flow of thought once 
begun, that all we can do is to change the course of 
the current. We have power to direct and hold the 
attention, that is all. Our thoughts of meditation 
and reflection are generated under the laws of associa- 
tion and suggestion wholly independent of any direct 
act of the will. The bodily senses are, as I have said, 
the mind's only avenues of communication with the 
world outside. They become available solely through 
strict obedience to physical law, which we have no 
power either to abrogate or modify, and what thus 
comes to the mind from nature or art, social inter- 
course or literature, depends upon its natural recep- 
tive capacity as modified by culture. The same 
landscape painted on the retina of a poet's eye con- 



176 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

veys a message of widely different import from that 
conveyed when it is painted on that of a plain, matter- 
of-fact man of affairs. The laws of suggestion and of 
association will determine what that import shall be. 
It is under these laws that the vanished past of cir- 
cumstance or of thought is called back into conscious- 
ness; it is under them that the imagination, which 
can combine, but not create, gathers its materials for 
its castles, determines how those materials shall be 
placed in the walls and what styles of architecture 
those walls shall assume. Processes of reasoning are 
carried on in precisely the same way. Our control 
over our mental operations reaches no further, as I 
have said, than directing and holding the attention. 
Here our power and our responsibility both begin and 
end. The measure of this power is the measure of 
mental liberty; with its decline begins our mental 
enslavement. If we concentrate our thoughts too 
intently and too long on any one theme, we incur the 
risk of losing our power of directing them into other 
channels and dangerously verge on monomania. On 
the other hand, if we indulge in inattention, suffer 
our thoughts to wander aimlessly, we weaken our 
concentrative power, and are in danger of losing it 
altogether, and thus sinking into mental imbecility. 
The golden mean of healthful self -poise lies between 
these two extremes. It is sadly true that this perfect 
intellectual liberty is rarely, if ever, reached on this 
planet. Bodily diseases, business perplexities, finan- 
cial losses, family bereavements, passionate longings, 
feelings of envy, jealousy, or revenge, the many un- 
due excitements to which our lives are liable, have 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 



177 



made every one of us at times victims of morbid 
moods, certain thoughts taking possession to the ex- 
clusion of everything else, and ruling us as with a rod 
of iron. How often, too, we suffer our minds to go 
wool-gathering, through sheer indolence or shiftless- 
ness, until we find it well-nigh impossible to call our 
thoughts in from their aimless wanderings and give 
needful heed to the stern duties of the hour ! 

If what I have stated of our intellectual life be 
true— and any one can readily verify it by recalling 
his own experiences— thoughts are evolved and 
grouped about any chosen theme with as perfect regu- 
larity, as strict conformity to unchangeable law, as is 
observed when salt atoms crystallize, or the structure- 
less contents of an egg are changed into the organized 
body of a bird. To set mental force free, then, and 
keep it free, is not to release it from divine law, but, 
by fulfilling certain prescribed conditions and by se- 
curing and maintaining sovereignty over the under 
forces, to remove whatever hinders it 'from energizing 
in those precise modes established at the first by Him 
whose fiat brought it into being. 

Within the soul lie dormant, also, wondrous ger- 
minal affections and aspirations, purposes and far- 
reaching hopes, waiting compliance with certain fixed 
conditions before their fetters fall and they begin to 
grow into the permanent moral traits of the soul. 
There is required for this quickening the gentle in- 
fluences of sunbeams of sympathy. To the joy-light 
of a mother's smile, to the distilling tears of her quick 
pity or of her overburdened solicitude, to the brood- 
ing acts of her ever-watchful care, to the tender tones 



178 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

of her affection, the spirit promptly responds. The 
greater the confidence inspired in the child, the deeper 
the intimacy and the more free and frequent the in- 
terchange of thought and feeling ; and if this close 
spiritual union is continued, if the mother holds the 
confidence and love of the child through the years, 
she becomes to him a heroine, a model, an inspiration, 
her influence reaching down into his innermost desire, 
vitalizing his whole spiritual being. He tells her 
everything, and in return receives the smile and tear 
and counseling word. Under the law of spiritual 
assimilation, which is dominant when soul is linked 
to soul, he gradually grows into her moral likeness. 
Here is no compulsion, no deadening of nature. His 
whole being is roused rather into intensest life, into 
the fullest freedom, her sympathetic response calling 
out the deepest emotion and motive. Eeserve and 
indifference are all gone. The charm of her personal 
presence is farthest removed from a feverish fascina- 
tion. His soul is simply quickened and freed as is 
the germ-force in the seed when planted in a sun- 
kissed soil. 

These promptings to hero-worship, this quick re- 
sponse to sympathy, this molding of the character 
by the subtile influences that go out from intimately 
communing souls, this directive power of the stronger 
spirit over the weaker and less mature, this enlarge- 
ment of liberty, this quickening of impulses, this 
wondrous vitalization, thus begun in the child through 
companionship with the mother, is repeated over and 
over again in the intimacies of after-life. The friend- 
ships and love unions of the soul, the choosing of 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 179 

great leaders in peace and war, in church and state, 
the canonizing of the objects of affection, the wonder- 
ful transforming power these chosen heroes of hearts 
have displayed in the world, the intense enthusiasm, 
the profound devotion they have enkindled, the quick- 
ening they have caused of the world's pulse, show be- 
yond question that it is a universal and deep-seated 
instinct of the heart to idealize those who have won 
their way to intimate companionship, or have become 
enthroned as loved leaders, and that, because of this 
instinct, hero-worship has ever been, and will ever be, 
under the law of spiritual assimilation, the greatest 
plastic power at work in the world. 

As in the intellectual life we can by the will 
direct and fix the attention, but not stop the flow of 
thought or change the modes of its generation under 
laws of association and suggestion, so in the spiritual 
life we can choose who shall be our intimate com- 
panions, to whom we will uncurtain our inner lives. 
But once chosen, the intimacy once begun, we shall 
inevitably grow into each other's likeness, the stronger, 
more mature spirit, the one of more pronounced posi- 
tive personality, having the greater plastic power. 
Just so soon as the free interchange begins, the pro- 
cess of assimilation begins under laws that are im- 
mutable. 

As soon as the soul feels vitalizing power from 
communion with a pure and benign spirit, it at once 
sets about self-mastery, control over all the under 
forces, the passions, appetites, propensities, every form 
of selfishness whose tendency is to enslave, and the 
growth is upward and outward toward a likeness to 



180 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

the superior and freer spirit. The converse is equally- 
true. Intimate communion with lower spirits, in 
whom ignoble thoughts are cherished, will result 
through the same law of assimilation, if continued, in 
increased enslavement and finally in moral death. 

In view of these laws that thus control in the de- 
velopment of character, is it not very significant that 
the historic Christ asked to be received into intimacy, 
to become the chosen hero of hearts ? As the affec- 
tions can not be enforced, freedom being their vital 
air, he has ventured no further than to stand at the 
door and knock, asking simply to have us uncurtain 
to him our inner lives. Is it not significant that he 
thus manifestly craves our affections, assures us that 
he is deeply interested in every worthy thing that in- 
terests us, offers in return his loving presence, and 
desires all barriers to be forever torn away ? Is it not 
because he is profoundly aware that when he is thus 
received into intimacy, soul touching soul, the germinal 
spiritual forces will at once begin to build up character, 
through processes of assimilation, under the immutable 
laws of growth ? Does he not evidently desire this 
close relationship, that he may transform us as soil is 
transformed into rosebuds, and eggs into plumed song- 
sters, knowing full well that, if we once let him into 
our hearts and cherish his presence there, the growth 
into his likeness will as inevitably ensue as, when we 
drop the seed in rich, moist, sun -warmed soil, or place 
the egg in a befitting atmosphere, a plant or an animal 
is built up by the constructive forces within ? Is not 
such a world-wide need a most sure prophecy of the 
coming of some one fitted and willing to supply that 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. lgl 

need ? What pilgrim spirit so worthy of a welcome 
as the historic Christ has ever visited this earth, and 
knocked, and waited at the door of the human heart ? 
What spirit so worthy of admission to its most sacred 
inner sanctuary ? What one into the charmed circle 
of whose presence it has been so distinguished a privi- 
lege to enter, who has come so admirably fitted in so 
many ways to draw all men unto him ? Who but he 
could answer to this need, and thus fulfill the prophecy ? 
He has, in the first place, shown an interest in us 
under such varied and trying circumstances that we 
can never for a moment question its genuineness, its 
depth, or its permanency. He has given evidence that 
he is moved not merely by some general feeling of 
friendliness for the erring, suffering, longing multi- 
tudes that throng this planet, but assures us that he 
knows each one personally, and that, because he does, 
he stands ready to brave danger, endure fatigue, suffer 
privation, and actually desires to meet us face to face, 
to look through our kindling or tear-dimmed eyes in 
upon our very souls, to watch the sunshine and shadow 
of our most secret thoughts. He wants to be wel- 
comed warmly, to have us feel that everything that is 
of interest to us is of interest to him. We all know 
that no intimate companionship can exist without an 
assurance of this personal attachment; that just so 
soon as we suspect that any of our earthly friends 
have lost their relish for our society, listen listlessly 
and grow wooden in their voices when they make 
reply, a deathlike chill, a spirit of reticence, comes 
over us, the meetings grow less frequent, the conver- 
sation drops into empty, conventional commonplace, 



182 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

the friendship cools into formal acquaintance and, it 
may be, terminates in bitter estrangement. Who has 
not had the iron thus enter his sonl ? There is always 
more or less of prudent reserve in earthly friend- 
ships, a questioning of how far one may presume 
upon the affections of another, so painfully mindful 
are we of our limitations. No such barriers can ever 
exist between us and Christ. He takes pains to assure 
us that there is not one of such low degree as to be 
unworthy of his personal regard. Our deficiencies, 
however great, in bodily attractions, or social rank, or 
worldly possessions, in mental endowment or culture 
or conversational power, need not in the least dis- 
courage us from aspiring to intimacy with him, for 
he asks for our loving trust and fellowship, not be- 
cause of what we are now, but of what we may 
become, ages heuce, under the marvelously trans- 
forming power of his personal presence. Here is a 
vantage-ground no earthly friend can have. Christ 
looks at us with the piercing eye of a God in the white 
light of eternity. The grand possibilities of the 
spiritual germ-forces locked up within us are defi- 
nitely outlined in his far glance of prophecy, as if 
they already were accomplished facts. He can see 
the flashing diamond into which the loose dust of 
carbon at his feet can be compressed. He can see 
the delicately fashioned flower petal, with its faultless 
lines of grace and exquisite coloring, into which the 
rude elements in soil and air may be molded at the 
talismanic touch of life. To us it does not yet ap- 
pear what we shall be. He, however, not only sees, 
but assures us that he sees, even in the humblest of 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 133 

those who truly love him here, the coming heirs and 
joint heirs with him to fadeless crowns. Under his 
plastic power, through this law of spiritual assimila- 
tion, he is confident that he can so develop our possi- 
bilities, if we will seek his society, as eventually to 
render our companionship with him both delightful 
and lasting. What soul does not stand in pressing 
need of such a friend ? Through whom else can such 
a need be met ? 

"We are assured not only that Christ is thus per- 
sonally interested in us, but that he knows us through 
and through. In his public ministry he frequently 
demonstrated his power to discern the most secret 
intents of the heart. How imperfectly we know our 
friends, or they us ! "We try to draw aside the hiding 
curtains, but can not ; and because of this unavoidable 
partial concealment, the interchange of sympathy is 
seldom, if ever, full and free. This element of em- 
barrassment never enters into our friendship with 
Christ. 

Again he, by his self-sacrificing spirit, inspires in 
us a degree of confidence our earthly companions 
never can. We feel perfectly safe in trusting our 
most cherished secrets with him, fear of coming es- 
trangement or of any advantage ever being taken of 
anything spoken in confidence never once enterino- 
our thought. By his absolutely unselfish devotion he 
naturally awakens in his true disciples a love tran- 
scending every other. This explains his saying, " He 
that loveth father or mother more than me is not 
worthy of me." He felt that he had those special 
gifts which brought him naturally into closer personal 



184 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

relations with those worthy of him ; that he had by 
his sacrifices commended himself to their confiding 
love more fully than any other. He desired only his 
natural place in our hearts. His purpose was not to 
supplant home aff ections, but to so vitalize and sanctify 
them that they would not only weather the storms of 
time, but outlast the grave. This supreme affection,- 
this complete self -surrender, in that it is cordial and 
according to nature, instead of enslaving, liberates us. 
Do we curtail our freedom when we give our hearts 
to our friends, our heroes, or our saints ? Are not 
our souls thus stirred as never before, all their forces 
aroused into most pleasurable activity ? Indeed, only 
a Christ can truly set us free ; for in none other do 
we find so perfect an ideal, a life without a flaw, a 
living revelation of God's yearning love. With no 
other one can we come into such close personal rela- 
tions, whose heartfelt interest in each one of us is so 
unmistakable, whose insight into our inner selves is 
so complete, to whom we feel that our intimate friend- 
ship will be so welcome and so unselfishly cherished. 
We are constitutionally social beings. "We can not 
stand alone. Companionship and hero-worship are 
the inborn demands of our nature. The purer and 
more unselfish the one whom we admit to intimacy, 
the more complete through his influence becomes our 
self-mastery; the formative spiritual powers within 
us the more sovereign over the under forces and the 
more subject to the upper and divine. How imminent 
the danger to which we are exposed, how imperative 
the necessity for the power of a Christ's personal 
presence ! 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 185 

We have seen how the under chemical forces 
within our physical organisms are slaves, not willing 
servitors, and that they seem to be on the watch 
for any weakening of the sovereign vitality ; for so 
soon as it in the least loses its control, they break 
out into open rebellion, bent on devastation and 
death. Hostile forces also wait outside, ready to rush 
in at any unguarded portal. The air is full of the 
eggs and seeds of parasites, which find a rich nexus 
in any part not thoroughly vitalized to hatch out, 
and multiply by myriads, into miasmic fevers and 
contagious diseases. Scientists have discovered sixty- 
six different species of these parasitic foes that prey 
on human flesh. Nothing but a most vigorous vi- 
tality can repel and destroy these attacking armies. 

In our intellectual life we have found ourselves 
equally exposed, symptoms of disorder constantly 
appearing— lack of power to hold or direct the at- 
tention, thoughts crowding themselves into undue 
prominence, loss of mental perspective, a weakened 
memory, a confused reason, a wild and wayward 
fancy. But especially in our emotional and moral 
nature have we realized the need of the watchful 
eye and the strong hand of a master. This suprem- 
acy can be maintained only by a willing obedience to 
the higher law of the conscience and the revealed 
will of God through the inspiriting, vitalizing power 
of Christ's pure life and sympathetic presence! 

Philosophy and history both affirm this. Every 
individual from the first, as we have remarked, needs 
outside assistance. Every mind and heart must have 
kindred minds and hearts of wider culture and higher 



186 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

virtues to instruct and incite. A recluse from birtli 
would be a drooling idiot or a wild bushman. His- 
tory has no record of any tribe of savages ever lift- 
ing itself unaided into civilization. Surely the moral 
world is now too seriously diseased, and has been as 
far back as we have any knowledge, to throw off the 
incubus by the strength of its own vitality. All are 
enslaved, and all may be freed, but only through 
some life-touch with a Christ. Under his benign 
influence the progress of the world is toward this 
higher sovereignty. Sciences and arts are discov- 
ering and conquering and utilizing Nature's forces. 
Diseases are becoming more thoroughly understood, 
and are being checked by more efficient remedies, or 
guarded against through wiser sanitary regulations. 
Literatures and schools are throwing off the incubus 
of ignorance and superstition, governments are ad- 
vancing toward larger social and religious liberty, 
and there is to-day among the leading peoples of the 
earth a more free and healthful development than 
ever before of that individuality which is a divine 
and priceless gift to every man. It is to Christ's in- 
fluence we can look, and to that alone, for a final 
and full unfettering of the human spirit from the en- 
thralling power of all the under and the outer forces. 
What a proffer Christ has here made us— a con- 
fidential companionship with himself, the uplifting 
power of his personal presence, the nourishing sun- 
shine of his sympathy, privilege to grow into his 
likeness ! We are at a loss to explain this condescen- 
sion, except on the ground of our immortality and his 
far look into the eternal future. 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 187 

His invitation is to every one. In this universal- 
ity of sympathy and power to help he stands alone. 
He comes to those of sick and bruised bodies, sayino- 
to them : " I too have passed through like bitter ex- 
periences, have been racked and torn with pain, and 
know how hard it is to bear, but I also know what 
wholesome discipline there is in it, what power to 
purify. Keep good cheer, for < whom the Lord 
loveth he chasteneth.' " 

His invitation is to the neglected, whose hearts 
have been saddened by lack of appreciation, who 
feel themselves walled out from those whose love 
and companionship they crave. Upon their wounded 
spirits his words fall like balm. " I came to my 
own, and my own received me not. My good deeds 
were evil spoken of. Despite my oft-repeated ex- 
planations, my miracles of power and acts of love, I 
was lamentably misunderstood and maligned until 
after my death. When my dark trial hour came, 
those whom I had chosen as my disciples and bosom 
friends forsook me and fled. Wait patiently, for I 
can assure you there will be a glorious uncurtaining 
by and by." 

His invitation is to the poor, the unsuccessful, 
the persecuted, those whose plans have failed from 
causes which they could not control, those who have 
struggled with a worthy purpose but struggled 
against a resistless tide. His earthly career had many 
things in common with theirs, too, for he was by his 
contemporaries very naturally pronounced a failure. 
He added nothing to his worldly stores, had not a 
roof to cover him, gained no social position, was 
13 



188 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

unpopular with the powerful and rich. He endured 
privation, won none of the world's reputed prizes. 
His very faithfulness blocked his way to personal 
preferment. His persistent determination to reclaim 
the fallen, rebuke sin, courageously to state and stand 
by his convictions, finally cost him his fair fame, 
brought down upon him the anathemas of the very 
rulers of the synagogue, and at last nailed him to the 
cross, to suffer and die between convicted thieves. 

His message is to the tempted. He had many a 
desperate struggle with appetite and passion. He 
fought no mock battles. His soul was racked with 
many misgivings at thought of the terrible ordeal 
through which he knew he was destined to pass, 
and these misgivings never permanently left him 
until the very morning of his crucifixion, after an 
all-night agony in Gethsemane. 

He comes to those who mourn, with a heart that 
has felt bereavement, with eyes that have filled 
with tears for the dead. He comes to the timid, 
the sick and the dying, this time with reassuring 
power, for in his many miracles he proved himself 
Lord over Nature. Her forces were ready servitors 
of his sovereign will. By his touch, fevers fled, the 
lame walked, lepers were cleansed. At his word, 
disordered minds were blessed with returning reason, 
and even the dead heard his call and felt the thrill 
of life again. Prom the grave he himself rose 
victor. He proved that he indulged in no idle boast 
when he said, " I have power to lay down my life, 
and I have power to take it again." Christ is thus 
not only a sympathizing but an all-powerful friend. 



SCIENCE AND CHUIST. 18 g 

Whatever the nature of the need, he can snppl y it. 
There is no pain or danger or disaster from which 
he can not free us, and will when it is best. Just as 
soon as we turn toward him with loving confidence 
and say, « Thy will be done," whatever chills or 
cripples or enslaves our spirits, clogs their powers or 
hmders their development, melts away in the sun- 
shine of his sympathy. No exigency for help so 
pressmg that he is not able to meet it. He thus be- 
comes our great liberator, rock of defense, inspiration 
comforter. He enables us to beat down the restive 
under forces which He in wait to enslave and destroy 
He does not free us from the pain, but from its 
power to dull the sensibilities ; not from poverty 
and care, but from their tendency to narrow and 
harden ; not from calumny, but from the maddening 
poison m its sting ; not from disappointment, but 
from the hopelessness and bitterness of thought 
which it so often engenders. 

We attain unto this perfect liberty when we rise 
superior to untoward circumstances, triumph over the 
pain and weakness of disease, over unjust criticism, 
the wreck of earthly hopes,* over promptings to envy' 
every sordid and selfish desire, every unhallowed 
longing, every doubt of God's wisdom and love and 
kindly care, when we rise into an atmosphere of 
undaunted moral courage, of restful content, of child- 
like trust, of holy, all-conquering calm. We should 
welcome the discipline God sees fit to send. Christ 
could not escape the cross and wear the crown It is 
enough for the servant that he be as his master, the 
disciple as his Lord. We must fight, at times fight 



190 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

desperately, and wear battle scars. In that ever- 
memorable farewell, Christ said, " My peace I give 
unto yon, not as the world giveth." This was the 
fruit of struggle, the calm that comes only from the 
perfect obedience of consecrated love. 

How priceless that trustful serenity in the midst 
of life's reverses and dangers and cares and separa- 
tions ! How does the freed soul rise on widespread 
pinions till the clouds of time roll their wind-driven 
billows beneath it, and it basks in the bright smile of 
God's promise ! Do you ask, doubtingly, Who have 
attained to this liberty ? Many have : those early 
Christians who, driven by relentless persecution, 
dwelt in the catacombs of Kome ; martyrs who died 
with songs on their lips ; the sainted Stephen, whose 
face shone as the face of an angel ; Paul, whose ring- 
ins* words of cheer have for eighteen centuries been 
heard round the world. All may. It is offered to 
all. Life's storms have broken over the souls of men, 
and will break again, but a Christ has proffered an 
all-sheltering love. 

A flood of light is here thrown on two most re- 
markable sayings of this marvelous Being : " If the 
Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free 
indeed" ; " He that loveth father or mother, son or 
daughter, more than me is not worthy of me." Only 
Christ then can give true freedom, and he only to 
those who are worthy of him ; and those only are 
worthy who make to him a complete self -surrender, 
according to him a supremacy in heart and life over 
every affection and aspiration known to earth. The 
revelations made by the science, not only of physics, 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 191 

but of metaphysics, to which, we have here called 
attention, enables ns to see now how self can be set 
free by an absolute surrender of self to another, 
provided that other is not only perfect man but 
very God, this apparent contradiction proving to be 
but apparent, the assertions to be in complete accord, 
betokening a most intimate acquaintance with the 
deep foundation principles on which this world is 
built. 

In what perfect keeping with the exigencies of 
this world-organism is the fact that he who assumes 
to be its very central heart should demand that every 
soul be in this threefold attitude toward him of im- 
plicit obedience, full consecration, and devout trust ! 
He stands alone among all the leaders of mankind in 
the sweeping nature of his exactions. ]STo radicalism 
of any religious zealot ever equaled this. He ac- 
cepts nothing less than an unconditional surrender of 
the entire being, with all its loves and longings. 
He recognizes no limitations and no exemptions. 

His rewards are as unprecedented as his demands. 
They are embodied in that last strange bequest to his 
disciples to which we have alluded, " My peace I give 
unto you, not as the world giveth." He makes no 
promise of any of earth's prizes, its wealth, or ease, or 
power, or social preferment, or trumpted fame, but 
has the courage and candor to disclose to them 
that poverty and contumely, scourgings and impris- 
onments, tortures and death itself, await them ; that 
he sends them forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. 
Who that has not the outlook of a G-od would hope 
thus to disciple a world ? would demand such devo- 



192 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

tion and in return offer simply an inward peace ? His 
call is as wide as the race, and lasting as the soul's 
eternal years. 

If we believe Christ simply a man, we can but 
regard with the profoundest amazement his unpar- 
alleled impudence ; if a God, then in the revealing 
light of the science of physics and of metaphysics 
we can perceive how he could consistently demand 
nothing less; that only when the soul is brought 
into such relationship with himself can the vast plan 
of providence, which has been unfolding since the 
dawn of time, reach final consummation. Do you 
ask why the obedience, the consecration, and the 
trust must be so absolute ? It is, as I have attempted 
to show, this very feature of the demand which 
stamps it divine. Christ has in his own history ex- 
emplified the very spirit he enjoins, not only in his 
human soul but. divine nature as well — a view rarely 
understood, still more rarely entertained. The God- 
man requires of us no more than he exacts even 
from his higher self. It is a very common error, yet 
a very grave one, to suppose that the great founda- 
tion principles of moral obligation had no existence 
until God created and established them, that his acts 
are wholly arbitrary, that he is amenable to no law, 
but is and always has been a law unto himself- It 
seems to me that on careful reflection it must be per- 
ceived that there can be no moral life unless there 
exists a moral law, a fixed standard of right by 
which to gauge motive and test character ; that as 
far back as there was any moral quality in God's acts 
there must have been this fixed standard to which 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 193 

he made his acts conform ; that these principles, this 
standard, must have been coexistent with his ever 
living self; that the Bible in its moral code has 
simply revealed and applied to the various exigencies 
of the complicate inter-relationships of human life 
these self-existent principles, that these principles 
God could not only not originate, but not even change 
in the slightest degree ; that by no pronunciamento 
of his can loving self -sacrifice, chaste desire, daunt- 
less fidelity to inward conviction, be degraded into 
revolting forms of vice ; nor, on the other hand, can 
cold, selfish greed, falsehood, lust, or murderous hate 
be exalted and transformed into the nobilities and 
manly virtues of the soul; that when he brought 
us into being he could do no more than endow us 
with moral discernment and with perfect freedom 
of choice, leaving us utterly characterless, and neces- 
sarily so when we came from his creative hand ; and 
that the responsibility of the nature of our future 
moral development rests wholly with our own sov- 
ereign selves, according as we choose to place our 
lives in harmony or in discord with these eternal 
principles of the true and the good, in harmony or 
in discord with this all-reaching, unchangeable law of 
order in the great world-organism of which he has 
kindly purposed that we shall form a part. 

Availing ourselves thus of the fight of modern 
science in our attempted explanation of the eternal 
destiny of souls, we can but conclude, first, that 
whoever stubbornly rebels against these inexorable 
systems of law under which every one is necessarily 
placed at the very birth of being, and persists in 



194 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

that rebellion, which he has the power to do ; who- 
ever, in other words, refuses to hold in vitalizing 
subjection the under forces of his most complicate 
nature, and to yield lovingly to the vitalizing in- 
fluences of the upper and divine, will under these 
very laws be finally pushed out of his present state 
of self-conscious being and lose forever his gift of 
sovereignty. If the body, the intellect, and the 
spirit are, as we have attempted to show, not only 
organisms in themselves but parts of the great world- 
organism, dissonance, disorder in any particular, will, 
unless arrested, spread confusion throughout the 
whole, and end eventually in total wreck. 

Science thus reveals the awful fact of an impend- 
ing doom of utter annihilation of self -consciousness 
and sovereignty to every incorrigible rebel in God's 
realm, for the very exigencies of the case demand this, 
the very fact that we are organized units, and as such 
are composed of complemental parts, having an 
intimate interplay and interdependence, and that 
we are parts of still wider organisms, and they of 
wider still, until the bounds of the human race are 
reached, and it may be the very bounds of being, as 
the planets and solar systems and sun clusters of the 
universe circle at last orbit within orbit, in one vast 
sweep, in grand majestic harmony around God's 
central throne. 

We witness every day the body as an organism 
passing under the doom of annihilation through the 
disintegrating power of the under forces which have 
broken away from the control of the upper. Faculty 
after faculty of the intellect we have seen disappear 



SCIENCE AND CHKIST. j 95 

through violation of the laws of mind until finally 
all evidence of any continued thought-life ceases. 
Science has furnished a strong presumption at least, 
through the analogies of Nature, that the soul also is 
organic, and must depend for continued self-conscious 
existence on the harmonious interplay of its parts, on 
the maintenance of its mastery over the under forces 
and its implicit and ready obedience to the upper! 
There are, as we have seen, no other conditions of 
liberty, and without liberty there can be no per- 
petuity of any organic life. It is now a rapidly grow- 
ing belief among Bible students that the final annihi- 
lation of the conscious selfhood of the incorrigibly 
wicked is revealed in God's word as well as in his 
works. Converts to this creed are now numbered by 
tens of thousands in the Christian churches. I was 
surprised to find, when my attention was called to 
it, how all the passages bearing on this subject were 
susceptible of such an interpretation, and that the 
vast majority of them fairly excluded any other. 
The symbols used are symbols of destruction, and not 
of eternal torment. It is said that the wicked are 
cast in where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not 
quenched. But the worm and the fire are instru- 
ments of annihilation, and the obvious meaning is 
that their work will go on uninterruptedly until it 
is complete, until the organisms on which they are 
delegated to feed have been utterly consumed. While 
there is food for the worm or fuel for the fire they 
will gnaw and burn ; but, as the processes of destruc- 
tion are progressive, that on which they prey is con- 
stantly diminishing, and unless there is being wrought 



196 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

a perpetual miracle of creation, as in the liver of the 
fabled Prometheus on which the vulture fed, an end 
must surely come. This figure, and indeed all other 
figures in the Sacred Eecord illustrating the final con- 
dition of those who persist in their disobedience, are 
robbed of their rhetorical force, are carried wholly out 
of their natural meaning unless this be their prophecy 

of doom. 

I would not be understood' as considering it pos- 
sible for a human spirit to be banished, even by divine 
power, absolutely out of all being— be reduced to 
nothingness, but only out of a state of organized, 
sovereign, self-conscious being; for scientists, as in- 
deed all careful thinkers, while conceding that any 
particular form of existence may be made to per- 
manently pass away, regard it as axiomatic that an 
entity can never come up out of nonentity, nor ever 
be returned to it. 

Many entertain the belief, born of hope it may be, 
that God is too kind and sympathetic to suffer any soul 
to be lost. Unquestionably he would rescue every one 
had he the power. The disintegration of the body he 
can arrest by sheer force of will, but the decay of the 
moral nature is the sad consequence of the exercise of 
a will as sovereign as his own. Without its consent 
he can not stop the process except by destroying the 
lire, for, as I have said, moral life is made up of 
sovereign acts of will. Liberty is its vital air. God 
can compel our obedience, but so soon as compulsion 
begins responsibility ends. The soul after that be- 
comes a characterless machine. Unless divine love 
can win back the rebel, his moral life must gradually 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 197 

die out, in accordance with spiritual laws which it is 
not in the compass of even God's power to alter or 
annul. Though God can not stay this destructive pro- 
cess against our will, however his sympathetic heart 
may be wrung with grief, as was Christ's when he 
wept over favored yet fated Jerusalem, still, while 
there survives the faintest spark of hope of the soul's 
reclaim, his spirit will no doubt strive with all its 
kindliest influences. I can not see why the mere fact 
of physical death should be a signal to cease. Not 
until the heart has grown stony in sin, not until 
moral death has come, will God's hope perish, and 
his pleading spirit, with all its loving patience, be 
finally grieved away. Until then he will stand and 
knock at the door of the human heart. 

Many profound scholars now affirm that it is' 
nowhere revealed in Sacred Scripture that the body's 
death ends the soul's probation. Surely sound philos- 
ophy does not teach it. But that probation will cer- 
tainly have an end sometime— before death it may 
be for some souls, after death for others — the im- 
mutable laws of spiritual growth and decay have most 
certainly decreed. 

Thus, from the phenomena and principles which 
the researches of science have brought to light, we 
are irresistibly led to the conclusion that in some far 
future all discords will cease throughout God's 
universe; that all souls which stoutly stand out 
against his overtures of love, refuse to come into 
harmony with the great world-organism of which 
they were purposed to form a part, withstand the 
spiritual vitalizing forces whose mission it is to 



198 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

organize all things into a divine order, will, through 
this perverse persistence, be finally pushed out of 
self-conscious, moral being ; that the time is coming 
when that notable prophecy will be fulfilled which 
declares that before Christ, who became obedient 
unto death, who is the perfect embodiment of the 
divine order and of the divine love, the central heart, 
the mysterious vitalizing power of this vast world- 
organism — that before this Immanuel, the Mighty 
Counselor, the Prince of Peace, in that great day 
when the divine plans shall have reached their final 
consummation, all knees shall bow and all tongues 

confess. 

Does the doctrine that Christ was divine and that 
he constituted the second person in the Trinity, con- 
tain any confusion of thought as to the true nature of 
personality, or in any way antagonize the conclusions 
of science on this the most perplexing of questions, 
or will modern discoveries in mental phenomena be 
found here also to be Christianity's most helpful 
allies? There are three widely different opinions 
prevailing among evangelical theologians as to 
Christ's nature : first, that he never possessed any 
human soul, but that a human body simply was 
animated for a season by the Divine Spirit ; second, 
that while he indeed had a soul, this was so com- 
pletely and permanently blended with the Divine 
Spirit that they together constituted a single new and 
unique personality which will remain intact through 
all the eternal ages ; third, that Christ was of a dual 
nature, lived a dual life, had two infinitely different 
spirits alternately animating and controlling his body, 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 199 

sending electric waves of thought and emotion over 
the brain, that most delicate and mysterious of all its 
organs; that at times only the human was manifest 
with its many weaknesses and limitations, its longings 
and its griefs; and then again only the divine ap- 
peared, teaching with authority, forgiving sins, scan- 
ning the secret intents of the heart, lifting the cur- 
tains of the future, healing the sick, restoring the 
blind, even raising the dead. 

I seriously question whether the first two opinions 
can bear the searching scrutiny of tins critical age, 
and as neither of them embodies my own belief, I will 
not now take time to state their grounds of defense. 
The third, however, seems to me to be in perfect 
accord not only with the facts of history, but with 
the conclusions of science. Multitudinous instances 
are well authenticated of one personality being for a 
time completely submerged by another through that 
marvelous power denominated mesmeric influence. 
These show that duality of nature is certainly pos- 
sible, that two spirits can alternately employ the same 
set of bodily organs. We have seen the mesmerized 
under this strange spell losing his identity, thinking 
the thoughts and thrilling with the emotional life of 
another. I, of course, would not attempt to designate 
or explain the precise mode of this particular divine 
informing in the case of Christ, but simply to show 
that the facts we have unearthed in our scientific 
researches into the subtile power of mind over matter 
in the realm of Nature serve to illustrate and confirm 
the third attempted explanation of the mystery that 
shrouds this the strangest visitant our earth has ever 



200 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

had. The testimony of our own self -consciousness 
convinces us that the ego is an indivisible unit, a 
wholly separate entity in itself, from which nothing 
can be taken, to which nothing can be added, with 
which no other ego can be so blended that they will 
permanently disappear and a new complete third ego 
result from this union. But that one ego can so 
dominate over another, so completely capture the 
body that incases it and through which alone it can 
operate, as to cause a period of oblivion to pass over 
it, is a fact that can be witnessed almost any day. 
The vanished ego is, however, noj; destroyed but 
simply repressed, and will promptly reassert itself the 
moment the dominating power is removed. There is 
here no blending of egos, no joint action or con- 
sciousness, nor is there the incoming of some new 
self, but simply the temporary domination of the 
stronger over the weaker one. This it seems to me 
is the only adequate explanation of the many apparent 
contradictions in Christ's life. In that forty days' 
combat with the tempter at the opening of his career, 
in that last all-night agony of prayer in the Garden 
at its close, in all the sufferings and stragglings and 
most glorious triumphings that filled the years be- 
tween, in all his sense of weakness and weariness and 
most pressing need of help which his frequent seasons 
of secret prayer betray, we see the brave battlings of 
simply a noble human soul ; but when we hear him 
call out in tones of authority, as he stands with 
mourning friends at the door of a sepulchre, " Laza- 
rus, come forth," when we hear him say to the help- 
less paralytic as he is laid at his feet, " Thy sins are 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 2 01 

forgiven thee," when we hear him assure the penitent 
brigand- who hangs beside him on the cross, " This 
day thou shalt be with me in Paradise," we hear the 
voiced mandates and blessed assurances of a God. 

Thus we see that science can not rightly urge 
against the claim that Christ was both human and 
divine the objection that this is in direct conflict with 
the testimony of self-consciousness as to the essential 
unity and indivisibility of the ego. Neither can it 
urge any such objection against the further claim that 
there are three persons in the Godhead of which 
Christ is the second, and that now, as the Son he 
sitteth on the right hand of the Father interceding 
tor men. As these phrases are interpreted by the 
great mass of Christian believers, such an objection 
would no doubt he valid, but it would not if they are 
taken as they may and, as it seems to me, should be 
The word "persons" can be used in a restricted 
sense, and mdeed has been in the polemical writings 
of some of our most eminent theologians It is 
unquestionably impossible for us to conceive of three 
absolutely distinct egos being combined into one and 
that too during the very time they each maintain 
intact their own individuality. This is simply a con- 
tradiction and confusion of thought, or rather we 
might say it is mere jugglery in words ; for to us 
constituted as we are, with our clear consciousness of 
a umfied and indivisible self, such a proposition is 
absolutely unthinkable. But there is a sense in which 
we ourselves possess a triune nature, the ego in us 
being made up of the intellect, the sensibility, and the 
will. We are capable of self-communings, of self- 



202 



OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 



criticism, of self -conflict, of general introspective 
thought. In this sense, and only in this, can we form 
any adequate conception of a triune God, and with- 
out a conception, a picture in the mind, belief is im- 
possible. It is said that we are created in God's 
image. Certain it is that the very utmost we can 
conceive of God is as a spirit possessing in infinite 
perfection faculties and attributes similar to those 
which we ourselves possess in but partially developed 
germ, the difference being not in kind, but simply in 
degree and in healthfulness of development. If he 
has any quality or attribute radically different from 
ours of which there is in us no likeness, we can have 
no knowledge of it whatever, it can not possibly be 
revealed to us, we having absolutely no conceptual 
capacity for such a thought. As well attempt to 
teach the horse we drive a proposition in Euclid. 
Therefore all we know of God or can believe about 
him must necessarily come through the medium of 
our own self-knowledge, and through that alone. 
The three persons in the Trinity can possibly mean 
to us nothing more than different phases or presenta- 
tions of the same divine ego, and any language of 
Scripture which seems to mean more than this must 
be regarded simply as bold poetic personification, a 
mode of thought peculiarly fascinating to the quickly 
kindling fancy of the Orient, and a marked feature of 

its literature. 

The blessed assurance that Christ now sitteth at 
the right hand of the Father interceding for the re- 
pentant and believing can, on final analysis, signify 
nothing more than the debate going on in the Divine 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 2 03 

mind between its stern sense of justice and its pity- 
ing, yearning, hoping love, preliminary and prepara- 
tory to the final decision. 

St. John has summed np the whole matter in the 
opening clauses of his Gospel, "In the beginning was 
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the 
Word was God." There we must leave it. 

Nineteen hundred years ago there appeared in 
-Palestine a Jew artisan. He lived a life without a 
flaw, a life free from the slightest taint of selfishness 
marked by no effort to secure wealth or ease, political 
or social preferment. He came into the closest sym- 
pathetic touch with the poor, the despised, the for- 
saken, and that touch was to save. There was no 
interest of self he did not sacrifice with noble glad- 
ness to free souls from the guilt of sin and the power 
of it The French skeptic Eenan testifies in his 
word-famed Life of Jesus: "In him is condensed 

all that is lofty and good in our nature Never 

has any man made the interests of humanity predomi- 
nate m his life over the littleness of self-love so much 
as he. Devoted without reserve to his idea, he sub- 
ordmated everything to it to such a degree that toward 
the end of his life the universe no longer existed for 
torn. Whatever may be the surprises of the future 
J esus will never be surpassed. His worship will grow 
joung without ceasing. His legend will call forth 
tears without end ; his sufferings will melt the noblest 
Hearts i ; all ages will proclaim that among the sons of 
men there is none born greater than Jesus." 

Though his youth was passed amid most contracted 
surroundings in a despised country town, and though 
14 & 



204 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

he was of Jewish parentage, yet he proved himself 
absolutely free from the proverbial narrowness and 
the petty prejudices of his race. His sympathies and 
his plans of reform were as wide as the world. In 
the three short years of his public ministry in a de- 
generate and superstitious age this young mechanic 
taught a system of ethics which has borne the test of 
the keenest criticism of the world for a score of cen- 
turies, and to-day stands abreast of the world's best 
thought, quickens it, leads it, uplifts it, ^ glorifies it 
still.° The present advanced forms of civilization are 
the outcome of the leavening influences that went out 

from his life and lips. 

He spoke in bold, uncompromising denunciation 
against all forms of sin, however intrenched behind 
social custom or church sanction, or bolstered up by 
wealth or power. He paid the forfeit for his fidelity 
with his agonies on the cross. His utterances and 
his conduct were pervaded with an unwonted, awe- 
inspiring spirit of command. He repeatedly claimed 
with unperturbed assurance that he was divine, and 
never once weakened with a single word of retraction 
when the powerful leaders of the synagogue con- 
fronted him before the multitude with the charge of 
blasphemy, but simply reasserted his claim and calmly 

pointed to the proof. 

In his person, in his surroundings, in the incidents 
and spirit of his ministry, in the manner of his death, 
he fulfilled with startling accuracy those old Messianic 
prophecies that had been handed down in the sacred 
books of his people. It is true that only a few of 
that race, which has been marvelously preserved till 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 2 05 

this hour, notwithstanding it lies scattered and peeled 
among the nations, have ever accepted him as their 
long-looked-for deliverer, for it was a spiritual, and 
not a temporal, kingdom he came to found ; it was 
from their personal sins, and not from the heavy 
Eoman joke, he sought to free his people, yet they 
have watched for some other one to come while nine- 
teen centuries have one by one crept slowly by, and 
watched in vain. 

In the facts which have been brought to light 
•through scientific investigations we have abundant 
evidences, as I have attempted to show, that the hu- 
man race is of sufficient importance to warrant just 
such a divine mission as Christ's, and that through 
this alone can that vast scheme of life succeed on 
whose unfolding through the untold ages God has 
already lavished such wealth of creative thought. 

Christ must have been either a myth, an impostor, 
a lunatic, or a God. The theory that Christ is a 
myth, the product of the thought-accretions of some 
reverent, ignorantly worshiping period of antiquity, 
a demigod like Hercules, the product of dim, distort- 
ing tradition— a theory put forth by the Bauer school 
of philosophy— has long since been abandoned by all 
historical critics of any standing as utterly untenable. 
Listen to the deliberate judgment of one of the most 
pronounced and keenest skeptics of modern times 
John Stuart Mill : « Whatever else may be taken 
away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left ; 
a unique figure, not more unlike all his precursors 
than all his followers, even those who had the direct 
benefit of his personal teaching. It is of no use to 



206 ° LD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

say that Christ as exhibited in the Gospels is not his- 
torical, and that we know not how much of what is 
admirable has been superadded by the tradition of 
his followers. The tradition of followers suffices to 
insert any number of marvels and may have inserted 
all the miracles which he is reputed to have wrought. 
But who among his disciples, or among their prose- 
lytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to 
Jesus or of imagining the life and character revealed 
in the Gospels ? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee, 
as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idio- 
syncrasies were of a totally different sort ; still less 
the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more 
evident than that the good that was in them was all 
derived, as they always professed that it was derived, 
from a higher source." 

Infidels are still puzzled to explain how unlearned 
Galilean fishermen two thousand years ago, when 
superstitions and most contracted views were rife, 
could have conceived and pictured with their pens an 
ideal God-man so masterfully that his acts and say- 
ings as recorded in their pages should be found and 
universally acknowledged, after the searching test of 
so many centuries, to be in perfect accord with what 
would be expected in such a strange and august per- 
sonage. To fashion such a hero, a hero who should 
in every exigency maintain the decorum, manifest the 
spirit, and teach with the wisdom of a God, would be 
an achievement far transcending even the creative 
genius of a Shakespeare. We can but admire the 
wise discretion of the writer of Ben-Hur in rigidly 
adhering, whenever he introduced Christ into his 



SCIENCE AND CHRIST. 



207 



story, to the severely simple outlines given in the 
Gospel histories. He seems to have recognized with 
true artist instinct that the least deviation from the 
grand original would but mar his work, if not ruin it. 
As to Christ's being either an impostor or a luna- 
tic, there is no infidel who has proved so reckless of 
his own reputation for insight or for candor as to 
venture on such a plea. 

There is but one other answer left us to that great 
question of the hour, " "What think ye of Christ ? 
whose Son is he ? " That answer has fallen from the 
lips and been embodied in the lives of millions of 
nobly trusting souls in every age since Christ's com- 
ing. Faith in his divinity is the foremost force in the 
world to-day, quickening, uplifting, and purifying the 
lives of its mighty multitudes as no other force has or 
can. The spirit of scientific inquiry is now abroad in 
the earth as never before, uncurtaining the past, ana- 
lyzing and classifying the phenomena of inanimate and 
animate nature, carrying its torch far into the abysmal 
depths of personality, discovering the laws that pre- 
vail in the departments both of physics and of meta- 
physics, leaving no subject untested, suffering no 
sacrifice to check its ardor. This spirit of inquiry, 
which owes its impetus directly or indirectly to this 
same Christ of history, will, as I confidently believe 
and have attempted to show, finally establish beyond 
all controversy that this very Christ is indeed that 
Divine Deliverer to whose advent Nature and Eeve- 
lation so long pointed with prophetic fingers, and of 
whose reign of love we have the blessed assurance 
there shall be no end. 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 



209 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 

I. 

No lips so mute as the lips of the dead. No 
curtain of so close a texture as that which hides 
from the life that now is the life which is to come. 
We sit by the deathbeds of our loved ones and think 
we catch glimpses of the spirit-world as their souls 
pass within the shadow. Sometimes when they seem 
sinking into the dreamless sleep there comes sud- 
denly into their eyes a far-away look, a rapturous 
glow, and we listen with bated breath while they try 
to tell us of visions of marvelous splendor ; but the 
light fades away and the voice is stilled forever, and 
as we brood in our desolation, we wonder whether 
after all the vision is not simply some bright figment 
of the fancy. We dare not, can not, rest our faith 
upon it. And so too, afterward, when, as often hap- 
pens, a strangely peaceful, an almost youthful look 
comes back into the face of the dead, we try to 
persuade ourselves that here at last we surely see 
something more than a sunset's afterglow, that here 
are glintings of light from the other world shot 
through for an instant as the curtain is lifted to let 

211 



212 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

the soul pass in ; but sober second thought refuses 
even this consolation to abide with us longer than 
through the first lonely hours of our bereavement. 

We go to the Sacred Records of our religion and 
in answer to our longing there comes the voice, " Be- 
loved, it does not yet appear what we shall be." We 
are assured, however, that the life beyond is made up 
of two widely contrasted spiritual states, but these are 
so poetically pictured, the descriptions are so ablaze 
with the richest profusion of Oriental imagery, that 
we are often left quite free to follow our own imag- 
inings. As a consequence of the granting of such 
wide latitude of belief we, in our eager search for the 
secret hidden away so deeply in the eternal silence, 
have been widely misled, as is evidenced by the dif- 
ferences in the interpretations we have given to the 
vague and meager revelations of the record, our judg- 
ments being warped by our individual temperaments, 
our early training, our tastes and aptitudes, our hopes 

and fears. 

Heaven, as generally conceived by the Christian 
world, is some resplendent city in a golden by and 
by, lying just over the border line of death, an 
Elysium into which the ransomed soul is instantly 
ushered the moment it makes its exit from this 
perishing and pain-racked body of clay. It is the 
supposed embodiment, the perfect fruition of all that 
aching, hungering human hearts have here most 
sorely missed and intently longed for. To the foot- 
sore and care-burdened it is fondly looked forward to 
as an unbroken joyous rest, a sweet Beulah Land ; to 
the starving, shivering poor, as an ever-blooming and 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 213 

ever-fruiting Paradise of Delights ; to the disabled, 
the sick, and the ill-shaped, to the bereaved, the 
neglected, and the lonely, as the place where all ills 
are ended, where long-lost loved ones meet again in 
never-ending union, where there is generous appre- 
ciation and blessed companionship and love without 
alloy. 

At the magic touch of death, in the twinkling of 
an eye, the most marvelous change is supposed to be 
wrought, the soul stepping at once from a life meas- 
ured by a span and marked by swift vicissitude, by 
broken hopes and painf ul partings, by desperate bat- 
tlings and tumultuous storms of passion, into one of 
eternal duration, of unbroken calm, and of fixed fate. 
Hell looms up as a place of blackest shadow, 
where lost souls wander ceaselessly, abandoned of 
hope and of love, driven hither and thither by wild 
gusts of passion and gnawed by sharp pangs of re- 
morse as they revolve over and over again in their 
awful nightmare of wretched, rayless thought the 
misspent privileges of an irrevocable past. 

Many, however, refusing to accept this creed of the 
masses, have formulated others more in consonance, 
as they think, with reason and the Eevealed Word, 
while many others still, becoming bewildered in their 
search, have either lapsed into agnosticism or settled 
down into blank materialistic unbelief. 

The scientific researches and discoveries of to-day, 
while they have in their first influences tended to 
unsettle the old faiths and to lead multitudes of 
earnest seekers to seriously question whether this life 
does not really end all, are beginning to give promis- 



214 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

ing token of clarifying and settling opinions as to 
whether there is a life beyond and what that life 
will be; and while inducing scholars to search for 
new meanings in the dim foreshado wings of Scripture, 
are bringing to light a wondrous and hitherto un- 
thought-of harmony between the intimations of 
science and the partial disclosures of that Holy 
Writ on whose divine inspiration reverent millions 
still confidently and lovingly rest their faith. 

This is no idle and fruitless speculation, for our 
present life is essentially colored and shaped by our 
conceptions of that which is to come. 

If science can be shown to be, as far as it goes, 
corroborative of Scripture and to throw strong side- 
lights upon its pages, and if more just views can be 
made to prevail as to what the Bible actually teaches, 
thousands will be rescued from a most alarming 
paralysis of doubt and disbelief. 

In the present discussion I desire to include 
under the appellation of science not only what are 
generally designated the exact sciences, but also the 
science of history, of metaphysics, of biology, and of 

psychology. 

In the first place, what aids have investigations of 
science furnished for determining whether there is 
any life beyond ? We may concede that it has thus 
far obtained no positive knowledge on this point, 
for it has kept itself busy discovering, classifying, 
and interpreting the phenomena of the life that now 
is. It is true it has quite recently entered upon a 
serious and systematic study of apparitions. In 1882 
a Society for Psychical Eesearch was founded in 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 215 

England with an important branch in our own coun- 
try. Prof. Henry Sedgwick, of Cambridge University, 
England, is at its head. Among its vice-presidents 
are the Right Hon. Arthur J. Balfour, the Bishop of 
Carlisle, the Bishop of Ripon, Prof. James, of Har- 
vard University, and Prof. Langley, of the Smith- 
sonian Institution. On its roll of members are the 
names of Gladstone, Ruskin, Lord Tennyson, Fred- 
erick W. H. Myers, Prof. J. C. Adams, F. R.'s., and 
Alfred Russel Wallace. Seven or more volumes of 
reports have already been issued by it. In one of 
them it deliberately makes the announcement that 
"the society has at last succeeded in establishing 
beyond all gainsaying, first, the fact of apparitions, 
and secondly, that they are as often those of persons 
living at a distance from the place where they are 
observed as of those who have died." But this, in- 
stead of finally disposing of the old query, starts new 
ones. What are those apparitions ? Are they real 
entities ? Have the souls of the living been able in 
some mysterious way to leave their bodies for a time, 
cross continents and seas with the swiftness of fight' 
take on and lay off at will new bodies, featured and 
contoured like the old ones, and startle their friends 
as they thrust themselves into their presence in open, 
wakeful vision ? Or have they become possessed 
with some strange power of placing themselves in 
close mental union with those to whom they seem 
to appear, and thus momentarily so to monopolize 
their imaginations that their very forms seem to 
stand revealed like living personages, their eyes to 
glisten, their cheeks to flush, their lips to move, and 



216 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

even their voices to utter familiar thoughts in the 
same old f amiliar tones ? Have the souls of the 
dead reclothed themselves and entered once more the 
haunts of the living ? Or are these apparitions some 
spiritual mirage, some seeming materialization of the 
concepts of unconscious cerebration ? That the cre- 
ations of the fancy have been apparently projected 
into space and assumed the form of actual, living 
personages is shown by the well-known experiences 
of William Blake, that mystic poet, engraver, and 
painter, born in London in the middle of the eight- 
eenth century. He was haunted with visions all his 
life. It is said of him that, when only a boy, saun- 
tering along one day he saw a tree filled with angels, 
bright wings bespangling every bough like stars. He 
told of it when he reached home, and his father 
threatened to thrash him for lying, but his more 
gentle mother, prompted by her sympathy, saved 
him through her intercessions. Multitudes of his 
pictures were careful copies of the faces and forms 
that he said he saw all about him. He would draw 
with the utmost alacrity and composure, looking up 
from time to time as though he had a real sitter be- 
fore him. Sometimes he would have to wait for the 
vision, then again it would promptly answer to his 
call. At others, in the midst of his sketching, -he 
would suddenly leave off and remark, " I can not go 
on, it is gone, the mouth has moved," or, " He frowns, 
he is displeased with my picture." The devil himself 
would politely sit in a chair to this strange man and 
then vanish instantly and without warning. When 
his work was criticised he would calmly reply, " It 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 217 

must be right, I saw it so," and this without any ap- 
pearance of conceit on his part. These visionary 
heads were called by Varley, a warm personal friend 
and admirer, " Blake's specters." They had the char- 
acteristics of literal portraitures of what Blake saw. 

Emanuel Swedenborg is another case in point, 
being a man of like constitutional temperament and 
gifts ; and similar experiences are also related of that 
most ethereally gifted Shelley, whose imagination 
Peter Bayne, the Scotch critic, has pronounced " the 
princeliest that ever sublimed enthusiasm or person- 
ated thought." Martin Luther, history tells us, once 
hurled his inkstand at the Imp of Darkness because, 
as he thought, he had too persistently intruded upon 
the privacy of his study chamber. 

The recorded evidences of the various apparitions 
of Christ after his crucifixion are well worthy of the 
dispassionate study of scientists, and as eminent 
investigators have at last thought it worth their 
while to enter methodically upon the examination of 
this whole group of psychic phenomena, embracing 
wakeful vision, mesmeric trance, and mental teleg- 
raphy, hitherto too largely abandoned to supersti- 
tious fear and reverent religious faith, and as this 
society to which I have referred has already an- 
nounced as established beyond gainsay that appari- 
tions of both the living and the dead have actually 
taken place, I have no doubt that Christ's appearances 
will receive careful and candid attention. It is confi- 
dently claimed, and certainly with fair show of reason, 
that no accredited fact of history has been more 
strongly fortified by testimony and circumstantial 



218 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

evidence. The science of historical research ought 
most thoroughly to test the sufficiency of the proofs 
and authoritatively announce whether it has discov- 
ered any fatal flaw. The candor of the witnesses 
it would seem must stand unimpeached. These re- 
appearances were wholly unanticipated by Christ's 
disciples. Overcome by their fears, they had aban- 
doned him in his last extremity. After he was taken 
down from the cross they had no question but that 
he was dead. All hope was lost. The devout women 
who went first to his tomb carried spices to embalm 
him. The prepossession, the " fixed idea " necessary 
to hallucination, is noticeably absent in the case of all 
these witnesses. What worldly incentive could his 
friends have had to fraudulently proclaim him risen ? 
The Roman soldiers took special pains to make sure 
that he was dead, and the results of the spear-thrust so 
thoroughly convinced them of it that they concluded 
not to break his legs. The Roman Government with 
extraordinary precaution sealed his tomb and set a 
watch. How account for the fact that his disciples, 
every one of them without an exception, after they 
had disgraced themselves by cowardly flight, reap- 
peared, boldly and stoutly contending that Christ had 
risen, and persisting in this open proclamation not- 
withstanding such public avowal jeopardized their 
every worldly prospect and endangered their lives ? 
Why did they make this the central thought in all 
their public discourse, and endure contumely, poverty, 
stripes, and imprisonment for this their professed be- 
lief, and persist in their intrepid advocacy until with 
but a single exception they met with a violent death ? 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 219 

The apparitions, it is asserted, were many, were made 
under widely different circumstances, and in some in- 
stances before a large concourse of witnesses in broad 
daylight. On one occasion Christ is said to have ac- 
tually eaten fish and honey with some of his disciples 
and to have told them to handle him so as to be 
thoroughly satisfied that he was not a wraith. Even 
doubting Thomas became convinced after he had been 
permitted to thrust "his fingers into the print of the 
nails. How account for the substitution of the 
Christian Sunday for the Jewish Sabbath except on 
the ground of a prevalent belief in the verity of 
Christ's resurrection, which if true must take rank as 
pre-eminently the most significant fact in all the past ? 
De Wette, a leading German rationalist, who with 
Yater did more than any other, so Strauss himself 
acknowledges, to establish the mythical explanation 
of the Bible narrative, freely confessed that the his- 
torical evidence of Christ's resurrection was absolutely 
incontrovertible, although the manner of it was still a 
mystery. This testimony is entitled to great weight, 
and may well set scientists thinking, for it was given 
after long and painstaking research begun with the 
confident expectation of finding the account fallacious, 
and in the face of the skepticism he had himself helped 
to create. 

ISTo candid mind can question for an instant that 
Saul of Tarsus firmly believed that he saw Christ 
while on the road to Damascus. He apparently had 
no self-interest to conserve by afiirming the appari- 
tion, but every self-interest to sacrifice. He was at 
the time a young man of bright parts and brilliant 
15 



220 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

prospects, a favorite pupil of Gamaliel, a most enthusi- 
astic and bigoted leader among the persecutors of the 
Christians — one whose ambition knew no bounds, 
whose heart knew no fear, whose brain knew no fa- 
tigue. This vision was not the vivid imagining of one 
tortured by an upbraiding conscience, for, as he after- 
ward expressed it, he verily thought he was doing 
God's service. There is therefore, as far as we can 
see, no assignable cause for his insistence that he saw 
Christ except the fact itself of such a vision. This 
belief he steadfastly maintained, though it subjected 
him to lifelong persecution and privation, exposed 
him to imminent perils, cost him his liberty, and at 
last his life. The narrator naively adds that the rest 
of the company heard a voice, but saw no man. 
"While this moderation of statement wins our faith in 
the truth of the tale, it naturally raises the query 
whether there appeared and spoke the veritable 
Christ, or whether the excitable and highly imagina- 
tive Saul unwittingly misinterpreted the effects on 
himself of some electrical discharge from the clouds. 
But, on second thought, we see how extremely im- 
probable it is that he should have remained thus 
deluded through those three succeeding years of re- 
tirement and quiet thought and the long after-life of 
severe trial. Besides, the theory that it was a delu- 
sion fails to explain Paul's vision two or three days 
after of one named Ananias coming to restore his 
sight, the specific direction by Christ's apparition to 
this same Ananias to visit Saul in a certain place, 
and the correctness of the information it then con- 
veyed. The corresponding events which immediately 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 221 

followed and the fact that similar visions were claimed 
by many with whom Saul daily conversed and in 
whom he afterward learned implicitly to confide, con- 
firmed him in his belief. If Christ had power to 
open Saul's eyes he certainly had equal power to shut 
the eyes of those who journeyed with him. During 
his forty days' tarrying after his crucifixion it is af- 
firmed that Christ became visible and invisible at will. 
These strange occurrences are well worth the careful 
consideration of scientists. Few facts have been more 
thoroughly authenticated. Few have more convinc- 
ing force or are fraught with more momentous issues. 
While it is the province of the science of history 
to sift the evidence upon which belief in these appari- 
tions of Christ is based, it is that of psychology to 
account for their origin, explain their nature, and as- 
sign them their true place among the accredited 
phenomena of this mystery-shrouded something which 
we call life. 

As this most inviting field of inquiry is now being 
examined more systematically than ever before by 
scientific explorers of world-wide repute, we may con- 
fidently look for some authoritative statement on the 
subject at no very distant day, and it may be that 
science will finally establish as a demonstrated fact 
that there is a life beyond and that Christ's resurrec- 
tion with its blessed promise and prophecy must be 
classed among the accredited facts of history. 

There are certain phenomena of somnambulism, 
clairvoyance and clairaudience, hypnotic trance, and 
telepathy which science has accepted as established 
facts but of which it has not as yet been able to make 



222 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

any satisfactory explanation, resting content, with 
here and there a notable exception, to pronounce 
them results of abnormal nervous conditions. 

Somnambulists have been known while wrapped 
in profound sleep, with eyes shut or insensible, to 
walk with firm, quick tread and with marvelous 
precision along the edge of precipices, to climb the 
rough, rocky sides of cliffs and take eaglets from their 
nests, to cross narrow bridges and the steep roofs of 
houses, to make long and dangerous journeys afoot 
and on horseback and return to their couches again 
utterly unconscious at daybreak that they had ever 
left them. How is it they thread their way with 
such certainty among the thousand pitfalls that beset 
them everywhere ? There is no appearance of blind 
groping. They act as if they saw clearly and 
quickly and had their wits about them. How do 
they see ? How tread so safely, keep their poise, 
avoid obstructions ? How adapt themselves to ever- 
changing circumstances ? Artisans have been known 
while in this state to be as expert and exact in their 
difficult work as when awake and with eyes wide 
open. Sermons, musical compositions, and poems 
have thus for the first time been written out and 
carefully corrected, and long and intricate problems 
in higher mathematics solved and transferred to 
paper, involving many a tedious process. Some 
affirm that Coleridge attributed his Christabel, whose 
exquisite music so charmed Scott and Byron, to a 
vision. It has, as you remember, a very abrupt 
closing. He was never able to extend and complete 
it as begun, as it seemed above, or at least foreign to, 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 223 

his ordinary conceptual and rhythmical power. It 
may have been the product of simply a preternatural 
awakening of Coleridge's intellectual powers, or, pos- 
sibly, the unconscious output of what T. J. Hud- 
son, in a work entitled The Law of Psychic Phe- 
nomena, denominates the subjective self. I have 
failed to find in Coleridge's published works any 
mention of this alleged vision-origin, but as to that 
far-famed fragment, Kubla Khan, written about the 
same time, we know that it sprang into life and 
actually assumed its present literary form while this 
exceptionally gifted seer lay in the arms of that en- 
chantress, opium, under whose fatal spell he finally 
fell. In a preface to this poem it is said that " in 
consequence of a slight indisposition an anodyne had 
been prescribed, from the effects of which Coleridge 
fell asleep in his chair at the moment he was reading 
from Purchas's Pilgrimage : " Here the Khan Kubla 
commanded a palace to be built and a stately garden 
thereunto, and thus ten miles of fertile ground were 
inclosed with a wall." The author continued for 
about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the 
external senses, during which time he had the most 
vivid consciousness that he composed not less than 
from two to three hundred lines, if that can indeed 
be called composition in which all the images rose 
up before him as things with a parallel production 
of the correspondent expressions, without any sensa- 
tion of effort. On awaking, he appeared to himself 
to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and, tak- 
ing pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote 
down the lines that are here preserved. At this 



224: 0LD FAITHS AND XEW FACTS. 

moment he was unfortunately called out by a person 
on business and detained an hour, and on his return 
found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that 
though he still retained some vague and dim recol- 
lection of the vision, the lines and images had passed 
away forever. He frequently purposed to finish for 
himself what had been originally, as it were, given to 
him — but the to-morrow never came. 

Eaphael painted visions which he thought were 
presented to him by the spirit of his mother. The 
poem A Eose Leaf, by the late Mrs. Helen Hunt 
Jackson, was, as she related to a friend, composed in 
her sleep, she awaking with the words on her lips. 
She immediately wrote out the verses and handed 
them to her physician, saying : " Can you tell me 
what this means ? I am sure I don't know." This 
occurred but a few weeks before her death. 

"We have been wont to pronounce all these to be 
but specimens of dream-literature and art, not of 
converse with the dead, yet, granting this, is there 
not a mystery about them still, as well as about the 
unwonted powers of sense displayed in sleep to which 
I have referred ? Do they not furnish strong pre- 
sumptive evidence that there are moods of the soul 
in which the resources of this tangible body of ours 
are not called into service, when the ordinary organs 
of sense are not needed for sense-perception, when 
thought processes are carried on without the use of 
the convoluted gray matter of the brain, when this 
cumbersome clay organism, failing to satisfy our 
needs, is temporarily laid aside and a second, subtler 
servant does the bidding of the master ? 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 225 

There are seemingly wakeful moods that are 
wrapped in as profound a mystery. Lady Henry 
Somerset, when at the opening of her great career of 
reformer and philanthropist, became greatly depressed 
with doubt, questioning even the being of a God. 
But as she sat alone one summer afternoon in her 
garden at the foot of an elm, deeply absorbed in 
thought, she heard a voice saying to her with startling 
distinctness, " Act as if I were and thou shalt know I 
am." From that moment her painful questionings 
ceased, the restful calm of a childlike faith pervaded 
and transformed her whole after-life, and she became 
a consecrated leader of reform, worthily taking up 
the work which the great Lord Shaftesbury had laid 
down. Luther while at Eome heard a voice as he 
was climbing painfully on his knees up the steps of 
the so-called Judgment Seat of Pilate, and its influ- 
ence never left him. It changed all the course of his 
after-life. It became one of the great determining 
forces that shook all Europe to its center in the Be£ 
ormation of the sixteenth century. Jeanne D'Arc 
the^ Maid of Orleans, that simple, uneducated, inex- 
perienced peasant girl of eighteen years of age, who 
at the opening of the fifteenth century led the forces 
of France to frequent victory over the disciplined 
veterans of England, proving herself more than a 
match for the trained strategists of the most warlike 
nation then on the globe— this maid insisted upon it 
that she was acting under the express direction of in- 
visible guides, that she heard distinct voices time and 
again that told her how to dispose of her forces, 
manoeuvre her artillery, and make and manage her 



226 OLD FAITHS AXD NEW PACTS. 

onsets. She also claimed to have visions and to be 
prompted to prophecy, and her f oretellings, improba- 
ble as many of them seemed when she uttered them, 
came true with rarely an exception. How will we 
explain her unerring insight into the deep problems 
that arise in the conduct of a great campaign, in the 
frequent and fearful emergencies of a raging battle ? 
Would the pronouncing her a great military genius 
solve the mystery of her career ? Whence that pro- 
found knowledge of the arts of war ? The age was 
indeed superstitious and religious fears and fervors 
were rife, but will these account for her victories ? 
However great the enthusiasm with which she, mount- 
ed on her charger and waving aloft her white stand- 
ard, led her hosts against the enemy, it offers no ade- 
quate explanation of the results. For almost five 
hundred years her career has filled the world with 
wonder. Was she one of those Heaven-sent and 
Heaven -taught leaders and rescuers that havejiow and 
then flashed out on the centuries of human history ? 
"Was she in touch with wiser intelligences than her 
own? Or was she privileged to call into activity 
some latent energies of the soul ? 

We are informed that a committee of the ablest 
scientists of the Royal Academy of Medicine of 
France, after an investigation extending over a pe- 
riod of six years, reported that it had demonstrated 
the existence of such powers in the human mind 
known as clairvoyance and thought-transference or 
mind-reading. Clairvoyants, it is said, have been 
able in their trances to read the pages of closed 
books, look through various opaque objects, and ob- 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 227 

serve minutely wliat is happening in closed apart- 
ments miles away. 

By the hidden help of mesmerism or hypnotism, 
as it is now called — although, as has recently been 
shown, the one is by no means identical with the 
other — one mind has been known to capture and 
control the concepts of another, overpower the will, 
conjure up phantasms of the fancy, and even for a 
time submerge in the subject self -consciousness it- 
self while not an articulate word passes and the 
minds en rapport are separated by quite considerable 
distances and the one upon whom this strange in- 
fluence is exerted is not thinking of his captor or 
acquainted with his whereabouts, or even aware 
whence that irresistible force originates that binds 
him as with bands of steel, fills his mind with wild 
alarms, or exalts it into ecstasies not its own. 

The dominance of ideas that come through " ex- 
pectant attention" may explain, as works on psy- 
chology affirm, some of the manifestations of animal 
magnetism and kindred states, but there is a large 
residuum of facts this theory is wholly inadequate to 
account for. Recent experiments by members of the 
Society for Psychical Research have demonstrated 
that an actual effluence emanates from the mesmerist 
and is subject to his will, while hypnotic power 
comes through suggestion solely, according to Prof. 
Leibault, partaking of the nature of a mental domi- 
nance. 

It has been found so difficult to sift out from the 
alleged phenomena of so-called spirit manifestations 
the elements of fraud, superstition, and self-deceiving 



228 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

reflex nervous and mental action, that most scientists 
have until recently despaired of arriving at any satis- 
factory results in their quest. But even into these 
dim, mysterious regions of shadow the trained ob- 
servers constituting the active members of this 
Society for Psychical Research, have resolutely en- 
tered, and their passionless, methodic scrutiny may, 
as here and there a scientific explorer has done before 
them, uncover facts which will astonish us. These 
hidden spirits of ours may be found possessed with 
capacities as yet largely latent which will suggest and 
go far to prove that they have a life independent of 
the gross clay organisms that at present house them, 
that they have under their control other bodies more 
perfectly equipped with sense organs and organs of 
thought, and of a texture originally so ethereal, or 
else so etherealized by a more perfect vitalization, 
that the disintegrating chemical forces can be kept 
permanently in check. 

Prof. F. "W. Barrett, in a paper read before this 
society, announced that through various experiments 
with private mediums it had been conclusively es- 
tablished that heavy tables were actually moved 
without any hand touching them, showing that mind 
occasionally and unconsciously can exert direct in- 
fluence upon matter outside the body, and this pro- 
fessor is vouched for by such men as Balfour 
Stewart and Richard A. Proctor as not only of high 
scientific attainments but of pronounced caution in 
investigation. 

J. "W. Edmonds, at one time President of the 
New York State Senate and judge in the New York 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 229 

Supreme Court of Appeals, a man widely known for 
his learning, his acumen, and his candor, testifies that 
in 1S51 he was one of a party of nine who witnessed 
a heavy mahogany table suspended in the air, with 
no one near it, in a room brightly lighted by two 
lamps. This is only one out of many unaccountable 
phenomena which came under his personal observa- 
tion. Startling facts in telepathy he also recounts. 
^Vhen he began his investigations he fully intended 
to make public exposure of what he suspected were 
gross deceptions, but his prejudices were all swept 
aside by the overwhelming evidence that came to him 
through his own senses. He took notes every night 
of what he had seen and heard as carefully as if in 
court, and afterward published them in two volumes 
on the subject. 

Dr. Eobert Hare, a distinguished professor of 
chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, one of 
the foremost scientific men of America, the discoverer 
of the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe which led to the cele- 
brated Drummond light, and an extensive author of 
scientific treatises and inventor of scientific instru- 
ments, published a volume entitled Spiritualism Sci- 
entifically Demonstrated which passed through Hyq 
editions, giving results of his most careful experi- 
mental research for two years into these manifesta- 
tions by means of appliances of very ingenious con- 
triving, and in this he gives instance after instance of 
heavy bodies being moved about without visible 
touch, as well as many others equally astounding. 
He had till now been a pronounced materialist, dis- 
believing alike in God, immortality, and revelation, 



230 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

but during these investigations "be "became so deeply 
convinced that the phenomena were caused by spirit 
agency that he dismissed all his former skepticism 
and became a devout disciple of the Christ of the 
Bible. However widely our interpretations of the 
facts may differ from his, none of us will question 
his capacity or his candor. 

Dr. J. Lockhart Robertson, long one of the editors 
of the Journal of Mental Science, a specialist in mental 
diseases, a man seemingly thoroughly equipped against 
delusion, having the experience and cool caution of a 
scientist, published in the report of the London 
Dialectical Society, corroborating his own testimony 
by that of another eyewitness, that he himself saw a 
strong table broken in pieces by some invisible power 
while he was firmly holding the medium's hands, that 
this was done at his own suggestion as a test in his 
own house ; also that he had heard most wonderful 
music produced without any agency he could discover, 
and that he had seen a shadow hand, not that of any 
one present, lift a pencil and write with it. He after- 
ward reiterated these statements while at the same 
time expressing his disbelief in their spirit origin. 

The Dialectical Society referred to was organized 
in 1869 for the express purpose of investigating psy- 
chical phenomena, and was composed of forty mem- 
bers, all of liberal education, being lawyers, scien- 
tists, and clergymen. It met at private residences, in 
well-lighted rooms, and had no professional or paid 
mediums. Four fifths of the members were wholly 
skeptical of the reality of the alleged phenomena. 
These investigators applied every possible test they 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 231 

could devise to guard against delusion or mistake. 
Their published reports show that heavy bodies were 
moved and sounds disclosing intelligence were pro- 
duced without any material contact, demonstrating 
that there is a force which, although in some unknown 
manner dependent on the presence of human beings, 
is not dependent on any muscular exertion. The 
society acknowledged that it obtained absolutely no 
evidence as to the nature or source of this strange 
energy, but simply proved the fact of its existence. 

Sir David Brewster, Lord Brougham, Lord Lind- 
say, F. E. S. ; Prof. Wells, of Harvard ; Prof. Hare, of 
Philadelphia ; William Crookes, F. B. S. ; all versed in 
science, together with William Cullen Bryant, Judge 
Edmonds, Lord Bulwer-Lytton, Mrs. Elizabeth Bar- 
rett Browning, T. A. Trollope, and scores of others, 
testify to a personal witnessing of extraordinary phe- 
nomena taking place through the celebrated medium 
D. D. Home, such as holding quietly in the naked, 
open palm red-hot coals without any apparent effect 
from the heat, the playing on musical instruments 
without any visible fingers touching the keys, and on 
many occasions the suspension of his body in midair. 
One of the above witnesses, Prof. William Crookes, 
F. K. S., discoverer of the metal thallium, a trained 
and experienced physicist, instituted a series of ex- 
periments, lasting several years, putting Home's pow- 
ers to the most severe scientific test, and published an 
account of them in the London Quarterly Journal of 
Science in 1871 to 1874, declaring them to be all that 
had been claimed. 

Home's seances were frequented by many of the 



232 0LI) FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

leaders in literary, scientific, and social circles in all 
the civilized countries of both hemispheres, and he 
was an invited gnest in the royal palaces of France, 
Prussia, Holland, and Knssia. Among the converts 
were Mrs. Browning, Dr. Kobert Chalmers, Dr. Lock- 
hart Kobertson, of the Journal of Mental Science, and 
the eminent physiologist John Elliotson. While 
Home and his followers ascribed his peculiar powers 
to spirit influence, the world outside have until re- 
cently rested content simply to call it a mystery — an 
exhibit of some occult force in Nature or in himself. 

A. E. Wallace enumerates such phenomena taking 
place through Home as percussive sounds, alterations 
in the weight of bodies, the suspension of human 
bodies in midair, luminous appearances, as of detached 
hands lifting small objects or writing, pencils writing 
without any one touching them, also phantom forms 
and faces. These strange occurrences took place dur- 
ing experiments conducted mostly in William Crookes' 
own house and in the light. Wallace himself, whose 
repute is world-wide as an equal sharer with Darwin 
in the honor of originating the theory of develop- 
ment, became an eyewitness, while investigating 
spiritism as a careful scientist, of phenomena equally 
as startling as any referred to, and as inexplicable if 
souls are held as close prisoners or are possessed of 
only such powers as we are accustomed to think. 

Kev. Joseph Cook, in a public lecture in the Old 
South Church, Boston, March 15, 1880, gave a full 
account of what he personally witnessed at the pri- 
vate residence of Epes Sargent two evenings before. 
There were nine in the party, a majority of whom 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 



233 



were strongly prejudiced against spiritism. Notes of 
the facts were at once carefully written out by both 
Mr. Cook and his family physician, Dr. Bundy, a 
Harvard medical graduate. Their detailed narration, 
showing their painstaking care to guard against decep- 
tion or mistake, I have not space to give, but they, 
with the three other male members of the company' 
published the following brief sworn statement, which 
will serve our present purpose : 

" At the house of Epes Sargent, on the evenincr f 
Saturday, March 15, 1880, the undersigned saw two 
clean slates placed face to face with a bit of slate 
pencil between them. We all held our hands clasped 
around the edges of the two slates. The hands of Mr. 
Watkins, the psychic, also clasped the slates. In this 
position we all distinctly heard the pencil moving, and 
on opening the slates found an intelligent message in 
a strong masculine hand in answer to a question asked 
by one of the company. Afterward two slates were 
clamped together with strong brass fixtures and held 
at arm's length by Mr. Cook while the rest of the 
company and the psychic held their hands in full 
view on the table. After a moment of waiting the 
slates were opened and a message in a feminine hand 
was found on one of the inner surfaces. There were 
^ve lighted gas-burners in the room at the time. We 
can not apply to these facts any theory of fraud, and 
we do not see how the writing can be explained unless 
matter, in the slate pencil, was moved without con- 
tact." 

Mr. Cook also in his lecture told his audience that 
this same Mr. Watkins read correctly that same even- 



231 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

ing what had by different members been secretly 
written on slips of paper afterward closely folded into 
pellets and thrown promiscuously on the table. 

A. E. Wallace, the eminent English naturalist 
already referred to, describing in the London Specta- 
tor a similar experiment in which he personally par- 
ticipated in 1877, remarks : " I myself cleaned and 
tied up the slates ; I kept my hand on them all the 
time ; they never went out of my sight for a moment ; 
I named the word to be written and the manner of 
writing it after they were thus secured and held by 



me." 



Colonel T. W. Higginson, in a sworn affidavit, tes- 
tifies, among other things, that a guitar, after it was 
placed by him " in such a position as to guard it from 
possibility of contact," was " played upon accurately 
and gracefully, that the accompaniments were ex- 
traordinary apart from the mystery of their origin." 
In conclusion he says : " The question of the spirit- 
ual origin is not now raised ; it is simply a question 
of fraud or genuineness. If I have not satisfactory 
evidence of the genuineness of these phenomena 
which I have just described, then there is no such 
thing as evidence, and all the fabric of natural science 
may be a mass of imposture. And when I find on 
examination that facts similar to these have been 
observed by hundreds of intelligent persons in vari- 
ous places for several years back, I am disposed 
humbly to remember the maxim attributed to Arago, 
' He is a rash man who outside of pure mathematics 
pronounces the word impossible? 

Prof. William Crookes, of London, relates hav- 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 235 

ing seen and heard an accordion played on while it was 
inclosed in a wire network and not touched by any 
visible hand. He also testifies : " Under the strictest 
test conditions I have more than once had a solid, self- 
luminous crystalline body placed in my hand by a 
hand which did not belong to any person in the room. 
In the light I have seen a luminous cloud hover 
over a heliotrope on a side table, break off a sprig and 
carry it to a lady; and on some occasions I have seen 
a similar luminous cloud visibly condense to the form 
of a hand and carry small objects about." He even 
goes so far as to affirm that he has seen in the full 
blaze of electric light spirit forms enter and leave 
closed and carefully guarded rooms. 

^ If it should be urged that these apparent materi- 
alizations can not be actual verities, that thoroughly 
organized flesh and blood bodies, with garments on 
like their old ones, could not thus appear and disap- 
pear, spiritists might reply to their Christian critics 
that it is recorded of Christ after his crucifixion that 
he ate with his disciples, invited the doubting Thomas 
to thrust his fingers into the print of the nails, and 
yet readily passed through closed doors, and finally 
before a great concourse of people was lifted from 
the earth and vanished out of sight, and that accounts 
of similar apparitions and materializations may be 
met with all through the books of the Bible ; and 
they might reply to scientists that such manipulation 
of matter by spirit as the passing of seeming solids 
through solids without any known disintegration is 
no more improbable than the existence of the much- 

talked-of and universally accepted luminiferous ether 
16 



236 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

with its seemingly contradictory properties, being, as 
Herschel and Jevons affirm, an infinitely solid ada- 
mant, having a pressure of seventeen billion pounds 
to the square inch, yet viewless, permeating all sub- 
stances, and offering no perceptible obstruction to the 
millions of worlds that are constantly whirling through 
it. The fact is, the nature of matter, the different 
conditions it may be in, and the kind and degree of 
control which force and spirit have over it, are sub- 
jects that are still wrapped in the prof oundest mystery, 
and our theories concerning them are liable at any 
moment to betray their need of radical revision. It 
would be well for the wisest of us to refrain from 
dogmatizing and setting boundries to the possible in 
Nature. The poet has truly said : 

" There are stranger things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamed of in your philosophy ! " 

Let us weigh the evidence with all due care and 
candor, apply scientific tests when we can, bravely ac- 
cept the facts, however mysterious they may be, when 
clearly and conclusively shown, and follow where they 
lead. It is to be foolishly overcautious to refuse to ac- 
cept facts until we can explain them. Can we explain 
how seventy-two telegraphic communications can be 
sent over the same wire at the same time ? Yet this 
was done at the World's Fair at Chicago. But we 
should be especially on our guard not to misinter- 
pret the facts after we have once found them. It 
is much easier to establish their verity than to dis- 
cover their nature or their origin. Our senses, the 
very witnesses we most trust, widely mislead us un- 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 237 

less we watch out. It was a great many centuries 
before mankind believed that the sun did not revolve 
around the earth, that the earth was not flat, or that 
the sky was not solid. The Copernican theory en- 
countered the most persistent and bitter opposition 
because people stoutly insisted on believing what they 
saw, or thought they saw, not knowing then, what we 
know now, that there is nothing so deceptive as ap- 
pearances. The baby reaching out its hand to grasp 
the moon does what we do over and over again in our 
thoughtless haste even after we come to mature years, 
believing the senses before their testimony is corrected 
by reason and experience. It is difficult for even the 
wisest and most mature among us to realize how 
radically our sense-perceptions have thus been modi- 
fied, how little we rely on what they affirm in refer- 
ence to the ordinary and oft-repeated phenomena of 
life. For instance, there are flashed over the optic 
nerve to the brain two images of everything we see. 
Those images are upside down and represent the 
object in different locations and give the apparent and 
not the real dimensions. These errors had at the first 
to be corrected slowly by experience. They are now 
made right instantaneously by unconscious automatic 
action. The result secured through the stereoscope 
is a case in point. By this instrument two distinct 
plane pictures of an object are simultaneously pre- 
sented to the mind. A combination is at once effected, 
giving to it a concept of corporeity— i. e., of the 
third dimension — the object standing out apparently 
in full relief . By a skillful distribution of light and 
shade and taking heed to the laws of perspective, 



238 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

artists succeed in bringing out like results on the 
canvas. 

New sights, those out of the ordinary, are often 
misleading. The mirage of the desert still allures 
thirsty travelers with hopes never to be realized. It 
takes every individual a long time to accurately 
locate the causes of sound, and to the very last we 
find ourselves often in a quandary or provokingly de- 
ceived. How difficult, almost impossible, it is for us 
to realize, what is actually the fact, that sounds are 
but sensations in the very mind itself ! The frequent 
disorders of the body, and the still more frequent 
unhealthy disturbances of the mind through passions 
and hopes and alarms, make the reports of the senses 
still more untrustworthy. The wide variance in the 
accounts of events by conscientious eyewitnesses is 
thus largely to be accounted for. "We find it ex- 
tremely difficult to eliminate, or to make due allow- 
ance for this so-called "personal equation." We 
should also, when tempted to ascribe to supernatural 
causes all mysterious phenomena, keep in mind how 
profoundly ignorant we are yet of the resources of 
the causes that are classed as natural in the intricately 
organized world without us or the still more intri- 
cately organized world within. 

I think we can safely say that after we have sifted 
out from the great mass of professed spirit manifes- 
tations those which we can not wholly free from the 
suspicion of fraud or of self-deception, there are a 
great many left, thoroughly authenticated, that can 
be accounted for only as the results either of occult 
natural forces or of powers largely undeveloped and 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 



239 



unrealized, belonging to our own complex being, or 
else to outside spiritual influences entering in through 
postern gates which for some wise purpose have here 
and there been suggestively left ajar. 

F. W. H. Myers, one of the leading members of 
the English Society for Psychical Research, already 
alluded to, has announced that he has become con- 
vinced by his investigations « of continued personal 
existence after death, and of at least occasional com- 
munication with those who have passed away " ; and 
Richard Hodgson, LL. D., the secretary of the 
American branch of this society, has expressed the 
same conviction. Rev. M. J. Savage, Boston's distin- 
guished Unitarian divine, cites numerous instances, 
which he personally vouches for in his volume on 
Psychics, that he frankly confesses he is unable to 
account for on any other hypothesis. 

It is, however, wise for the most of ns to delay 
adopting the last set of causes until we individually 
become fully satisfied that the other two are wholly 
inadequate to produce the phenomena. The fact 
that mankind have all down the centuries made haste 
to pronounce as supernatural what they could not 
at first understand, and have had to acknowledge 
their blunder again and again when reluctantly con- 
vinced by the overwhelming proofs of science, should 
place us on our guard. The world was once thought 
to be swarming with gods and goddesses, nymphs 
and naiads and gnomes and fairies. These mysteri- 
ous powers we now call natural forces. We have 
found out their laws, the conditions that unfetter 
them, and, having rid ourselves of our former super- 



240 0LD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

stitious fears and reverence, we harness them to our 
machinery without scruple and make them draw our 
trains of trade. 

Instances of telepathy have from time to time 
come to light which furnish still other revelations of 
power, apparently wholly without the range of the 
known limitations of these present tangible bodies 
that hem us in. These as yet inexplicable phenom- 
ena of mind-reading that have been accepted by the 
Society for Psychical Eesearch and by many psy- 
chologists outside as scientifically established, show 
that soul touches soul somehow by direct impress- 
men t — that not only spiritual vision but spiritual 
speech can now be classed among our experiences. 

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, during his visit to 
England in 1888, while conversing informally one 
evening with Bishop Ellicott, Dr. Samuel Smiles, 
and Kev. H. K. Haweis, remarked : " I think we are 
all unconsciously conscious of each other's brain waves 
at times ; the fact is, words and even signs are a 
very poor sort of language compared with the direct 
telegraphy between souls. The mistake we make is 
to suppose that the soul is circumscribed and im- 
prisoned by the body. Now, the truth is, I be- 
lieve, I extend a good way outside my body, at least 
three or four feet all around, and so do you, and it 
is our extensions that meet. Before words pass, or 
we shake hands, our souls have exchanged impres- 
sions, and they never lie." 

In one of our leading magazines there have recent- 
ly appeared two articles from a prominent American 
writer, S. L. Clemens, giving a large number of well- 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 241 

authenticated instances of this most astounding feat of 
sending-our ideas along invisible wires stretching away 
over leagues of distance without the aid of articulate 
speech, facial expression, or gesture, or any apparent 
bodily assistance whatever, or of any known force or 
communicating medium. Such like phenomena of 
telepathy have naturally led many to query whether 
our spirits are such close prisoners, after all, as we 
have been accustomed to believe— whether they do 
not sometimes roam at will, leaving their ponderable 
bodies behind them and taking their imponderable 
ones to bear them company and do their bidding. 
Others have been led to suggest— what seems to 
me the simpler and more natural explanation— that 
the circuit of our direct spiritual impressment is, 
under certain favoring conditions not yet under- 
stood, far wider than we have been accustomed to 
suppose. 

Camille Flammarion, the distinguished French 
astronomer, who has given these subjects of telep- 
athy and apparition most thoughtful attention, re- 
marks in one of his papers : " All we can now admit 
is that a person does not really transfer his personality, 
his spirit, or psychic principle, into the presence of 
the observer, but that there is an action of spirit 
on spirit at a distance. We may admit that each 
thought is accompanied by cerebral atomic move- 
ments, for physiologists admit this. Our psychic 
force gives rise to etheric vibrations which are trans- 
mitted to a distance, as are all vibrations of ether, and 
become perceptible to minds which vibrate in unison 
with ours. The transformation of a psychic action 



2±2 0LD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

into etheric vibration is reciprocal, perhaps analogous 
to those seen in the telephone where the receptive 
plate, similar to the one which transmits, repeats the 
sonorons vibration. The action of one mind upon 
another is manifested in various ways — sometimes by 
the complete perception of the being, sometimes 
throuo-h hearing a well-known voice or unusual 
sounds. Mind acts on mind as it does in cases of 
mental suggestion, at a distance, a phenomenon not 
more extraordinary than the action of iron on a 
magnet, or that of the moon on the earth, or the car- 
rying of the voice by electricity, or the revelation of 
the chemical constituents of the stars by spectrum 
analysis of their light, and all other marvels of con- 
temporary science, only it belongs to a higher order, 
and can put us on the road to a psychical understand- 
ing of the human being." 

The many cases on record of persons, in great dis- 
tress, in imminent peril, and in the throes of dissolution, 
revealing to distant friends at the very instant by ap- 
parition or thought-message their critical condition, 
find in these suggestions of this great swant a possible 
and indeed a very plausible explanation on a wholly 
naturalistic basis. But in the case of persons who 
are dead we unfortunately lack the requisite means 
for determining beyond dispute whether they have 
actually reappeared. There is no reasonable doubt 
but that closely resembling forms have been seen and 
apparently the old familiar voices heard, but what 
those forms and voices actually are, or how or whence 
they come, are still open questions. In the case of 
messages from the dying, the distressed, or the im- 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 243 

periled we can test whether the message was received 
at exactly the date the crisis occurred, and this has 
frequently been done, but in case of the dead no such 
basis for comparison is afforded. Whatever hypoth- 
esis we adopt we encounter serious objections which 
we have not yet been able to set aside. Scientists 
may later on make new discoveries or formulate some 
new theory that will fit the facts. We must still 
watch and wait. But investigations thus far have 
reasonably well established that our direct will-power 
over matter extends at times beyond the immediate 
confines of our bodies, and to an astonishing degree ; 
that we have acute sense-perceptions without the aid 
of our bodily sense-organs, being able to see with 
closed eyes through opaque substances over leagues 
of distance and in the densest darkness, to hear the 
voices of our friends while conversing in ordinary 
tones and sitting within closed apartments across the 
wide breadth of a continent ; that we can be brought 
into such close spirit-touch with others as to inter- 
change thoughts without speech or any outward ex- 
pression ; that we can by mesmeric or hypnotic influ- 
ence master the will, sway the passions, temporarily 
dethrone the reason, kindle the fancy, even submerge 
the whole personal consciousness of another coming 
within the charmed circle of this mysterious outreach- 
ing of the soul ; that we can, when under peculiar 
conditions unknown as yet, so capture the conceptive 
faculties of others, even though miles away, by the 
subtle power of our personality that they will firmly 
believe that we have actually appeared before them 
in bodily form, that they have clasped our hands, 



244 0LD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS, 

heard our voices, seen our very faces aglow with the 
old-time light of the life within. 

How significant these discoveries ! How they ex- 
alt and enlarge our conceptions of the resources of 
these indwelling spirits of ours ! Yet these triumph- 
ings of the soul over its material surroundings so 
transcend the ordinary and the expected, and have 
been so compromisingly associated with fraud and su- 
perstition and self-deceit, that the majority of scientists 
have until within the last two or three decades treated 
the accounts with scornful incredulity and indiffer- 
ence. Dr. William B. Carpenter, F. E. S., and cor- 
responding member of the Institute of France, one of 
the most distinguished physiologists of this century, 
even went so far as stoutly to contend to the very last 
that mesmerism, clairvoyance, spiritism, and mental 
telegraphy were, all of them; either delusions or frauds, 
symptoms of morbid mental states, products of intent 
expectancy, or cunning tricks of impostors. He in- 
vestigated long and carefully and yet secured only 
negative results ; but ought his testimony to outweigh 
the positive testimony of a score of others equally 
eminent in scientific attainments and equally candid 
and careful in their search after truth ? There are 
now quite a large number of scientists ready to con- 
cede that even such extraordinary and unlooked-for 
powers as I have just enumerated have actually been 
manifested by certain living persons under certain 
conditions yet unknown, but whether any of the 
strange phenomena that have come to light are prop- 
erly attributable to the spirits of the dead they still 
consider extremely doubtful, although many of the 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 245 

manifestations are as jet otherwise seemingly inex- 
plicable. ~ The messages thns conveyed are most of 
them so inconsequential, so foreign in tone to anything 
we would naturally look for from our friends who 
have passed into the other life, they are on so com- 
monplace a level, many of them so trivial, so untrue, 
so apparently earthborn, that they leave us still in a 
state of gravest doubt whether, after all, from the lips 
of the dead the seal of secrecy has really been broken, 
or from their forms and faces the veil of invisibility 
ever been drawn aside, though we passionately long 
to have them come back and tell us of their fate and 
give us some token of their continuing love. 

But even should we for the present hold in abey- 
ance our belief on this point, which it would be emi- 
nently wise to do, as investigations are now at last 
being prosecuted with refreshing vigor, have we not 
still certified to us through scientific research in these 
new fields facts that afford us clear intimations of the 
approaching permanent transcendence of the spirit 
over gross matter with its clogging and disintegrating 
tendencies, and in these intimations have we not 
Heaven-sent prophecies of an endless life ? 

Of course while this last point of spirit-influence 
is left undetermined we have no demonstrative proof 
of immortality, but have simply widened our horizon, 
found the soul to be a less close prisoner than we 
once thought, but still a prisoner, organically linked 
with matter. Concerning the soul's real nature, as 
well as its ultimate destiny, science, though affording 
us most wonderfully reassuring intimations, furnishes 
us no absolutely certain knowledge. 



246 0LD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

The psychical possibilities of man are apparently 
far beyond anything we have been accustomed to 
think, and those already revealed offer most convinc- 
ing evidences of the existence of a second body highly 
etherealized and fully equipped with organs of sense, 
and with command over matter far outstripping the 
gross clay tenement it hides within, and through 
whose open portals at times it blazes forth in ineffable 
glory as in the face of Moses, of Stephen, and of the 
transfigured Christ. Prof. Stewart and Prof. Tait, in 
their work on The Unseen Universe, say that " we 
are logically constrained if we regard the principle of 
continuity and the doctrine of immortality as both 
true, to admit the existence of some frame or organ 
not of this earth, which survives dissolution. It is 
possible that there have been, and that there are, oc- 
casional manifestations of this spiritual nature." 

John Weiss well remarks : " Nothing can save the 
soul from collapsing into the blind forces of the world 
but the preservation of its identity, and that can not 
be done without a frame to hold it, a system of organs 
by which it can express spiritual function. To pre- 
vent this collapse and preserve that continuity rightly 
so insisted on by men of science, there must be a 
present duplex organism in order that the soul may 
still be clothed upon directly after death has done its 
work ; and in order that its thought-lif e may continue 
without break, its touch be still kept up through sense- 
perceptions, through memory, and through its vari- 
ous associations with its world-environment, it must 
continue to retain some bodily organic equipment, 
rendered invisible as a subtle breath or aura, of a 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 247 

flamy or airy nature and diffused through the whole 
body." - 

F. G-. Fairfield, following out the suggestions of 
Dr. Maudsley, the eminent alienest, in his analysis of 
Swedenborg's mental idiosyncrasies, has elaborated 
a theory as to the origin of- clairvoyance, mesmerism 
and alleged spirit manifestations that will well repay 
careful consideration. It certainly commends itself 
as at least a fair working hypothesis, and I will not 
be surprised if it contributes not a little to the final 
solution of some of the deep mysteries that still 
shroud the nature and destiny of the soul. He grants 
that it has been incontestably established that certain 
persons have the extraordinary gift of seeing with 
closed eyes through usually opaque substances; of 
lifting ponderous bodies without contact, even of 
floating their own as on invisible wings ; of holding 
thought-commerce with and exercising dominion 
over minds widely removed; of being the means 
through which phantom hands and forms have ap- 
peared, having for a time all the semblance of life 
and then fading away as mysteriously as they came ; 
but he at the same time contends that these strange 
phenomena are rather preternatural than supernatural, 
the achievements of spirits still in the body instead 
of those who have passed out of it; that they are 
brought about through an element which he desig- 
nates as nerve-aura, not identical with electricity 
though correlated with it, as also with light and the 
other forces; that through it voluntary impulse is 
transmitted from the brain to the muscles, though 
less rapidly according to Helmholtz, than electricity 



248 0LD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

travels; that it is capable of acting at considerable 
distances through the atmosphere, is more or less 
subject to the will of the individual who emits it, 
partakes of volitional properties, is susceptible to 
sensory impressions and unconscious action, can be 
condensed into visible forms bodying forth the flitting 
fancies of the controlling mind or of the mind en 
rapport with it — that, in short, it is of the nature of 
an emanating ether having the molecular properties, 
motor and sensory, of nerve-tissue itself though in 
lessened intensity. This aura, he contends, enters 
into intimate molecular relations with surrounding 
objects, so that in certain peculiar nervous states the 
will is brought into the same close touch with things 
outside the body that it continually maintains with 
the muscular fibers within it. This aura being also 
correlated with light and being capable of perme- 
ating the most solid substances, converts opaqueness 
into transparency as by electric flash. It continues to 
be the same ready medium for the transmission of 
thought beyond the boundary of the body as it is 
within it, and thus brings minds miles apart into as 
close contact as if they were working through the 
convolutions of the same brain. 

He has gathered much interesting data in support 
and illustration of this hypothesis which I regret 1 
have not space to recite in sufficient detail to give 
them their due significance. He contends that our 
every act is but a transformation of nerve-force into 
motor, that the power of certain animals to evolve at 
will a phosphorescent glow is but an instance of the 
correlation of this nerve-ether with light, as is also 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 249 

the quite distinct halo that has been observed by the 
distinguished Dr. Brown-Sequard and others to en- 
velop the head of the patient and to radiate into 
the room in some cases of consumption and of epilep- 
tic seizure, and, perhaps I may add, as is that indefin- 
able light that suffuses the human face in those 
supreme moments of intense excitement when the 
soul is at its best. He further contends that the cor- 
relation of this ether with electricity is shown in the 
shock given by certain eels and fishes. He explains 
the magnetic attraction or repellence of some natures, 
and the power possessed by well-nigh all of us to 
make our presence felt before our approach is dis- 
covered — a fact so common that an adage has grown 
out of it, as but the reflex action caused in others 
through this same connecting medium of nerve-ether. 
He holds that the dynamic displays are but akin to 
those resulting from the disturbances of electric 
equilibrium, and if, as is affirmed by Faraday, there 
is enough electricity in a drop of water to produce a 
stroke of lightning in case the equilibrium is de- 
stroyed, we can readily see how it is possible for the 
human will, by causing a like disturbance in this out- 
going nerve-aura, to display such marvelous mastery 
over the ever-acting force of gravitation, and also 
how it is possible for sufficient force to be stored in 
the cells of the brain, if suddenly correlated as 
motor energy, to condense this mysterious ether into 
phantom forms incarnating for a passing moment 
the creations of its fancy. 

F. J. Hudson, in a very able treatise recently issued 
on The Law of Psychic Phenomena, has, on the the- 



250 ° LD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

ory of the duality of the human mind, advocated by 
Prof. Wigan, Dr. Brown- Sequard, Prof. Proctor, and 
other eminent investigators, founded a very plausible 
explanation of the origin of these mysterious phenom- 
ena we have been considering. "The subjective 
mind is," as this author contends, " the soul or spirit, 
and is itself an organized entity, possessing independ- 
ent powers and functions, while the objective mind 
is merely the function of the physical brain and pos- 
sesses no powers whatever independently of the phys- 
ical organism. The one possesses dynamic force in- 
dependently of the body ; the other does not. The 
one is capable of sustaining an existence independently 
of the body ; the other dies with it." The operations 
of the one are unconscious, often of lightning-like 
rapidity, and as yet inexplicable. It is gifted with an 
absolutely perfect memory, is capable of only deduc- 
tive forms of reasoning and is under the control of 
suggestions emanating from without or from the other, 
the objective self. Those exceptional mathematical- 
and musical gifts displayed by such phenomenal 
characters as the boy Colburn and the idiotic Blind 
Tom come from this subjective self. The astonish- 
ing displays of genius also here find origin ; and to 
this source all those occult powers may be traced 
which still puzzle philosophers and scientists. ; 

Francis Galton takes the same view of genius in 
his English Men of Science, defining it as the auto- 
matic activity of the mind as distinguished from the 
effort of the will, ideas coming instantaneously as by 
inspiration, the man of genius being driven, rather 
than himself holding the reins. 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 251 

But the interpretations by these investigators 
suggestive and ingenious as they certainly are, are in 
some respects open to a like criticism of inadequacy 
made by them against others, for while they seem to 
furnish a key to many more classes of phenomena 
than those already noted, they still leave unaccounted 
for phenomena equally as startling and important. 
The Society of Psychical Eesearch has therefore 
still left to it the task of sifting out all such facts as 
are incontestably established and are sufficiently char- 
acteristic and inclusive to represent the question in 
all its essential phases, and then, with the help of the 
theories already propounded, to formulate a new one, 
if possible, answering fully the conditions of the 
problem. 

But need we wait for the results of this exhaustive 
research and the final settlement of the question 
whether these manifestations are messages from the 
dead or deeds of the living before we recognize in 
them clear prophetic intimation of a life beyond? 
For even if they are but the deeds of the living, yet 
all along down the centuries to the present hour have 
they not come to us as revelations of most astounding 
possibilities, not only in Nature, but in the human 
soul placed for the present beyond our reach to 
master and make serviceable, as if held in reserve, 
waiting for some far-off divine event to bring us into 
our rich inheritance of perfect and permanent su- 
premacy ? Are they not golden prophecies to gladden 
our hours of doubt ? Has not a kind Providence sent 
them as foreglints of glories yet to come ? Yoices 
from out these mysteries seem to whisper to us 
17 ' 



252 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

" Wait. The day of your deliverance from the thrall 
of matter, of your supreme and abiding sover- 
eignty over it with all its contending forces, is re- 
corded in the great Book of Divine Decrees. The 
pencilings of gray light that now and then break in 
through the half -open gateways of the sky amid the 
night shadows of the life that now is are har- 
bingers of that great awakening, of that larger, 
richer, fuller life that is yet to come." 



II. 

Scientific research has brought to light still 
further facts and led to still further theories tending 
greatly to strengthen the probabilities of a future life. 
While they yet fall short of positive proof they are so 
interesting and suggestive that we can ill afford not 
to give them our most thoughtful attention. In the 
work already alluded to, entitled The Unseen Uni- 
verse, by Prof. Balfour Stewart and Prof. P. G. Tait, 
some of these facts with their interpretation and bear- 
ings on this great question may be found learnedly 
elaborated. A brief allusion must here suffice, and 
rather than simply outline what they have said I will 
give the thought as it lies in my own mind after re- 
ceiving their help. 

Herschel and Clerk Maxwell affirm that the ele- 
mental atoms, of which sixty-four or more different 
kinds have been discovered, have all the marks of 
manufactured articles. No means have yet been 
found for disintegrating them or effecting in them 
any change whatever. They are intimately correlated, 
and enter multiform chemical combinations with 
mathematical precision after certain methods and 
under certain unalterably fixed conditions, and from 

253 



254 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

such substratum all the worlds have been built. It 
has also become a settled conclusion of science that 
the present order of things is slowly but surely ap- 
proaching an end ; that the universe is running down ; 
that there is an unceasing progress toward a state of 
universal equilibrium, of complete rest ; that all the 
suns, which are but condensed balls of the original 
lire mist, are radiating, unused, out into immensity, 
incalculable amounts of energy every hour as they 
cool and shrink ; that satellites are one by one gradu- 
ally falling into their central suns ; that the very sun 
clusters themselves as their heat is thrown off draw 
closer together and will become in the end each a 
solid mass ; and that these globular resultants of the 
vast nebulae of the skies will also in their turn meet 
and fuse until but a single lone star will hang in 
space, the fires and light and life of which will also at 
the last die out, and darkness and silence and death 
settle down upon it. 

"While it is true that no human imagination can 
possibly conceive of the immense periods of time that 
must elapse before the end comes, yet there is no 
force known in Nature that can avert this fate or per- 
ceptibly delay it. Any order or plan that is thus so 
arranged that it is certainly to cease must as certainly 
have begun. This is axiomatic, for on a moment's re- 
flection we will see how utterly absurd it is to suppose 
that anything can have been eternally approaching a 
goal that has been fixed, or that a goal could have 
ever been fixed at a distance infinitely remote, for this 
involves a flat contradiction. There can be no plan 
or scheme so devised as to be certain of completion 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 255 

that is not strictly finite. Everything destined to have 
an end must have had a beginning. 

The theory advanced by Sir William Thompson 
and Prof. Helmholtz, independently of each other, 
that the first germs of fife came to this planet through 
meteoric showers, would not, even if true, serve at all 
to prove the suggestion made by them that life, the 
organized life, of which alone we have knowledge, 
may be as old as matter itself, for the most ancient of 
all the worlds, on which vitalization first began, must 
have passed through a fire and gaseous period pre- 
cisely like our own, during which no germs could 
possibly have subsisted. In this same connection it 
may be said that experimenters have also signally 
failed to prove that life has had a spontaneous origin, 
is a constituent element of matter, one of the forms of 
physical force, but rather they have reached the con- 
clusion, though reluctantly, that only from life can 
life come, that it can not create physical force or be 
converted into it, but is an entity in itself. Huxley, 
Tyndall, nearly all leading scientists, concede this. 

When science affirms that this visible universe has 
had a beginning it does not design to state that it 
came from nothing, for that is impossible, but that in 
some past period an intelligent will by a new combina- 
tion of already existing matter and force, which must 
be regarded as at the first emanations from the divine 
nature, gave rise to the present so-called elemental 
atoms, which constitute the substratum of all known 
substances. Whether either matter or force ever did 
exist apart from each other, or ever could, we have no 
means of determining, but we are convinced that it is 



256 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

only under and by means of their present combina- 
tions that their existence is made known to us through 
our senses. Matter would be utterly invisible were it 
not for the revealing power of the very forces which 
hide within it. After the lapse of long ages of evolu- 
tionary change following the manufacture of these 
atoms new cosmic forces stepped in and molded them 
into worlds ; then still farther on, when the time was 
ripe, vital forces appeared and played their part in the 
unfolding of the vast plan. They came from the un- 
seen, as did the atomic forces before them, as did also 
the atomic walls themselves that still continue to shut 
in these mysterious prisoners. The vital forces build 
up organisms, each after its kind, live in and reign 
over them their appointed season, and then vanish 
again into the unseen. At the last nothing will be 
left of all this grand pageant that we call the uni- 
verse but a single motionless, lifeless black ball, a 
burnt-out cinder, made up of the original atoms, and 
as these are, as has been said, evidently manufactured 
articles, and manufactured for this specific purpose, 
it is reasonable to suppose that when this purpose 
is attained and matter lies dead in space, the atoms 
themselves will, by the same all-directing intelligent 
power, be dissolved and pass back again into that 
mysterious unseen existence out of which they issued 

forth. 

The clear inference from all this is, although of 
course no positive proof is claimed, that the invisible 
world is the permanent, the eternal one, while the 
visible is the finite, the temporal, serving merely as a 
passive medium for great groups of unseen forces, 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 257 

one after another, to enter in for a season and then 
to pass out again into the unknown dark ; that human 
souls which are the final consummation of this mar- 
velous evolution of the ages, instead of being in- 
gulfed in nothingness when they vanish into the 
unseen, are but advanced to another stage of their 
life's eternity, enter upon still another period of their 
endless growth, approach still nearer in their attributes 
and perfectness to the great Oversoul whose image 
they bear. 

These learned authors, Stewart and Tait, assure 
us that within thirty or forty years it has gradually 
dawned upon scientists that there is something be- 
sides matter which has as much claim to recognition 
as an objective reality, and that they have logically 
reached the conclusion that there is an invisible uni- 
verse from which life as well as matter proceeds, 
and that immortality is possible without a break of 
continuity. 

W. F. Evans, in a thoughtful volume entitled 
Soul and Body, very aptly declares : " The underlying 
reality in what we call matter is nothing but spirit. 
Material things, as they are only effects, can have 
no independent existence. They have the root of 
their existence in mind, for all things owe their origin 
and continued being to God, who is an infinite, every- 
where-present, spirit. The materialistic school of 
philosophy, reasoning from the fallacies of the senses 
and rising no higher, sees a realm of matter and sup- 
poses mind or spirit to be one of its functions. The 
idealistic or metaphysical school, reasoning from con- 
sciousness, believes in a world of spirit, and that 



258 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

matter is only its sensuous manifestation. In this 
latter view the deepest realities of the universe are 
not material but spiritual." 

If now, laying aside the telescope with its almost 
illimitable sweep of vision and closing earth's pon- 
derous rock records of the vast geologic periods of the 
past, we take up the microscope and scalpel and enter 
the regions of the minute, we will come upon facts 
that give rise to presumptions of a life beyond even 
stronger than those presented in the learned treatises 
to which I have just referred, although still falling 
short of any positive proof. It will be interesting 
and helpful to note exactly how far also in this de- 
partment of research science has succeeded in solving 
the great secret of human destiny. Microscopists 
assure us that each body with all its complicate ad- 
justments is the joint work of a vast company of 
bioplasts, invisible toilers, imbedded in minute specks 
of transparent and seemingly structureless jelly, and 
that these tiny workmen all sprung from a single 
progenitor lodged inside an infinitesimal atom. The 
specialist turns the full blaze of his most improved 
search-light upon that atom, and though found to be 
throughout perfectly transparent, he fails to detect 
the least trace of any occupant or any signs of or- 
ganization in it ; yet while he is looking, the walls 
begin to move like thin curtains and to be pushed out 
here and there into prominences as if by the impatient 
hands of some imprisoned spirit. A moment later it 
seizes nutrient particles lying near it, and instantly 
they are transmuted by some hidden alchemy into 
this same colorless, transparent jelly ; a little farther 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 259 

on, and this mass, being increased, cuts itself in two, 
and, strange to say, in each half a like living force 
appears to dwell, there being not only two masses, but 
two distinct vital forces, where there was only one 
before. And this proves but the beginning of an 
extended process of self -division that goes on until a 
swarming colony of individualized workers have come 
upon the scene. To astonish us more, these workers 
are not simply duplicates of each other, as we would 
naturally expect, but are distinguished by most marked 
differences of capacity and of appointed lines of 
action, for out from these specks or groups of specks 
of j e %> as from the spinnerets of spiders, are spun 
variously formed material, each speck or group spin- 
ning differently, as with self -locomotion they move 
from point to point, one turning out the tough con- 
tractile fibers of a muscle, another the thin walls of a 
blood vessel, others still the white gristle of a tendon, 
the flexible tube of a hair, or the solid pillar of a 
bone. Each seems to have a separate task, a pro- 
nounced capacity for that task, and a positive repug- 
nance to any other. To add still more to our wonder, 
they work in concert, seem to be most intimately cor- 
related, so that although never known to consult 
together or to have any knowledge of what each 
other is doing, yet, without hesitancy, confusion, or 
mistake, move right on tirelessly until, their work ' 
being accomplished, part is found to fit to part with 
absolute accuracy to the minutest detail, and the result 
is a piece of machinery the most complicate and at 
the same time the most complete embodiment of unity 
of design in the widest diversity of parts of which we 



260 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

have any knowledge or can form any conception. 
These jellylike vitalized points of matter, the dwell- 
ing places and workshops of the bioplasts, constitute 
abont two fifths of the human body, the rest being 
made np of nutrient and formed material. When we 
die this jelly coagulates, and in consequence the body 
becomes rigid. 

These vitalizing forces may be dislodged from 
their protoplasmic hiding places separately or in 
groups, and the protoplasm will decay like any other 
effete matter despite all our efforts to call back the 
evicted sprites to their old haunts again. Bioplasts 
spring only from bioplasts. Through no physical 
force or chemical combination can they possibly be 
called into being, and into no other variety of energy 
can they possibly be converted. They stand apart. 
They come wrapped in invisibility, enter upon their 
work, do it in silence and secrecy, and without word 
of warning or token of farewell take their flight. 
They will not affiliate with any other force, but simply 
master and use it while they can. They accompany 
certain combinations of physical and chemical forces, 
but are not caused by them, and not being their prod- 
uct but merely accompaniment, the breaking up of 
the one does not, as far as we know, destroy the other, 
but simply causes their disappearance. As they neces- 
sarily precede the organisms which they build, one 
would naturally ask why may they not five after they 
are gone and build new ones as before ? But whether 
they precede those bits of protoplasm in which they 
are first found and which certainly do not survive the 
bodies built out of them, and whether that protoplasm 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 261 

is not, after all, profoundly organized, although with 
our microscopes we can not detect it, and whether the 
life of the bioplast is not really dependent on the 
maintenance of that "protoplasmic organization, are 
matters still undetermined. It is true Lionel Beale, 
one of the leading microscopists of the world, together 
with Huxley and others equally eminent in science, 
affirms that we fail to detect any organization in the 
bioplasmic mass. But this may be due simply to the 
imperfection of our instruments. We once thought 
the nebula of the heavens to be but luminous banks 
of mist. We afterward succeeded in resolving them 
into universes of separate suns. There is abundance 
of room for organization beyond the present micro- 
scope limit Joseph Cook, commenting on these most 
startling yet fully accredited facts in the history of 
bioplasts, says : " If life may exist before organization, 
why not after ? I affirm that the microscope begins 
to have visions of man's immortality." Has he not 
here inadvertently taken as settled what is really still 
in doubt, that protoplasm is structureless and that the 
bioplasts preceded it ? As far as our present knowl- 
edge goes, bioplasts do not exist apart from protoplasm. 
He also says that there are movements and life in the 
protoplasm, and the cause of the movements must 
exist before the movements." True, but not neces- 
sarily before the thing moved. We should also note 
in this connection that as all the lower animal organi- 
zations as well as those in the vegetable kingdom are 
found to be equally the work of bioplasts, Joseph 
Cook, if consistent and logical, would in holding his 
position have to consent to throw wide open the gates 



262 0LD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

of endless existence not only to all sentient, but even 
to nonsentient forms of life. 

How are we to account for the differences in 
natural endowment between those little myriad body- 
builders as evinced in the character of their work ? 
Though the multiplication of individuals is secured 
seemingly by simple subdivision, the whole vast col- 
ony coming from a single progenitor which began 
by mysteriously cutting itself in two, yet most radical 
and constitutional differences in aptitude, purpose, 
and power, become manifest between the divided 
parts the moment the division is effected, whereas we 
would reasonably expect absolute sameness if the 
process is nothing but self -division. To astonish us 
more, these differences are intimately correlated as 
these skilled artisans and artists, without apparent 
consultation, confusion, or delay, set about not only 
elaborating the absorbed nutrients into different sub- 
stances suited to different uses, but molding them 
into widely different forms that prove to be so com- 
plemental, so suited to each other, that they constitute 
the divergent parts of one grand unified plan, and in 
their intricate yet harmonious co-operation give un- 
mistakable evidence of having been designed from the 
first to carry out certain comprehensive and far- 
reaching purposes in organic life. 

The skill here displayed is so consummate, the 
inventive resource so seemingly inexhaustible, the 
prescience and the knowledge of natural laws so pro- 
found and inerrant, that no thoughtful observer can 
for a moment doubt but that a divine ideal is here 
being inwrought into this marvelous mechanism and 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 2 63 

that the work goes forward under a divine impulse 
and by a divine informing. But how God's purpose 
is thus accomplished is not so clear. Does he give 
his personal supervision to the working out of every 
detail ? Does he instruct and direct every moment 
every one of the million workers that are employed 
in building up every organism ? That is not the way 
science interprets the great ongoings of divine pur- 
pose. Such thought would be in marked dissonance 
with the teachings of all the analogues in Nature, 
would belittle and degrade our conceptions of the 
modes of the divine life. The history of the past 
teaches us that God has employed great secondary 
causes to body forth his ideals through the slowly 
moving centuries. To effect this design, forces seem 
to have been arranged in regular gradation, rank 
above rank, from the lowly ones that work among 
the primal atoms of matter to the archangelic that 
are privileged to enter the very presence chamber of 
Jehovah and serve as his swift-winged messengers of 
love. As over the atomic, the chemic, and the me- 
chanic forces the bioplastic for a time hold sway, so 
over the bioplastic a higher grade of vital force must 
have been placed in command and intrusted with the 
general plans and specifications prepared by the 
Great Architect. Bat does this second and superior 
vital force also have a master— one still more widely 
commissioned and more highly endowed ? This piece 
of mechanism constructed under its supervision is 
found in intimate and inseparable relation with a world- 
environment, a perfect and continued harmony with 
which is absolutely essential to its further maintenance 



264 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

and availability. Does this delegated overseer of the 
bioplasts also superintend the subsequent workings of 
this organism after it has been once constructed and 
set in motion, or is that task assigned to another 
agent still ? Microscopists tell us that they have dis- 
covered two kinds of nerve-fibers having respectively 
automatic and influential arcs at their termini ; that 
in man these are blended together by innumerable 
commissures yet are perfectly distinguishable ; that 
the automatic respond promptly and mechanically to 
the touch of the environment, although inert in them- 
selves, as are also the influential ; that the will-power 
has exclusive control over the influential, and can 
check and modify the automatic to a certain extent. 

The frontal lobes of the brain are conceded to be 
the seat of the intellect, but electrical stimulation of 
these highest parts of the influential nervous mech- 
anism produces, it is said, no muscular motion, 
which fact, coupled with that of its essential' inert- 
ness, shows that it can be set in action only by some 
force which is both wholly exterior to itself and 
wholly different from any of the physical forces in 
the world which environs it. 

Lotze, Ulrici, Wundt, Helmholtz, Draper, Carpen- 
ter, and Beale, all teach this. It is often urged, and 
I think with excellent show of reason, that the fact 
of the unity of consciousness and the persistence 
of the sense of personal identity not being affected 
by the continual flux of the atoms in the body can be 
adequately accounted for only on the ground of the 
coexistence of some spiritual entity wholly different 
from the ever-changing particles of matter and their 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 265 

inherent forces with which it is surrounded and over 
which it -dominates and which it skillfully organizes 
during a few fleeting moments. The brain does not 
think any more than the eye sees, one simply minis- 
tering to thought, the other, as the microscope or 
telescope, to sight. These are evidently but helps 
and instruments to serve the purposes and minister to 
the wants of an invisible something that has taken up 
a temporary abode within. Important parts of the 
organism— an arm or a leg, an ear or an eye— may be 
utterly destroyed and the ego will still remain intact. 
But whether Hie ego, although thus an entity in itself, 
still lives on after the entire organism is resolved 
back to dust remains a mystery. It disappears, and 
as far as we know never returns. 

Some argue that as the soul is as external to the 
body as^ sound to the ear or light to the eye, and as 
dissolution of these organs does not destroy the 
forces which affect them and which they are designed 
to interpret and reveal^ so the destruction of the 
body does not extend to the life of the soul. This 
argument is at fault as the cases are not parallel, an 
organic or vital union existing in the one, a mechanic 
or a chemic in the other. The eye and ear are only 
media through which the forces outside affect the 
spirit within, and these outside forces never for an 
instant sever their union with matter, while the spirit 
within, for aught we can possibly prove, becomes 
utterly divorced. It certainly disappears, and we 
have no knowledge that it ever comes back. 

The materialists are equally at fault when they so 
strenuously insist that because the soul becomes un- 



266 0LI) FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

conscious when the brain is injured it must continue 
so when it is destroyed, for, as Eev. Dr. Alvah 
Hovey has ably argued, the soul is still organically 
connected with the brain when the brain is simply - 
injured, but utterly parted from it when destroyed. 
While the spirit continues to act through a living 
organ, when the organ suffers it must suffer with it, 
but this does not show that it can not live without it. 
While it remains in a house it must look through the 
windows of that house. If the windows are dark- 
ened it must be enveloped in the shadow. But for 
aught we know it can open the door and pass out 
into the broad light of day. A similar non sequitur 
is involved in their further insistence that, inas- 
much as the mind is infantile with the babe, manly 
with the adult, debilitated by disease, doting in the 
decrepitude of age, it must be annihilated at death, 
for the changes that are wrought during the different 
stages of life all occur during the continuance of the 
organic union, and doubtless because of it, and there- 
fore afford no criterion of what a complete severance 
of that union would result in. Many of the most 
pronounced evolutionists frankly declare that the 
position of the materialists is untenable, that there is 
a spiritual world as well as a physical, and that be- 
tween the two there is absolutely nothing in common. 
Prof. John Fiske remarks in his work on The Un- 
seen World that "modern discovery, so far from 
bridging over the chasm between mind and matter, 
tends rather to exhibit the distinction between them 
as absolute. It has indeed been rendered highly 
probable that every act of consciousness is accom- 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 2G7 

panied by a molecular motion in the cells and lobes 
of the brain. In a rough way we might thus say 
that the chemical energy of the food indirectly pro- 
duces the motion of these little nerve molecules. 
But does this motion produce a thought or state of 
consciousness? By no means. It simply produces 
some other motion of nerve molecules, and this in 
turn produces motion of contraction or expansion in 
some muscle or becomes transformed into the chem- 
ical energy of some secreting gland. At no point in 
the whole circuit does a unit of motion disappear 
as motion to reappear as a unit of consciousness. 
The physical process is complete in itself and the 
thought does not enter into it. All that we can say 
is that the concurrence of the thought is simultaneous 
with that part of the physical process which consists 
of a molecular movement in the brain. To be sure, 
the thought is always there when summoned, but it 
stands outside the dynamic circuit as something ut- 
terly aloof from and incomparable with the events 
which summon it." 

Prof. Tyndall, in his Fragments of Science, says 
that " the passage from the physics of the brain to 
the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthink- 
able. Grant that thought and a definite molecular 
action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not 
possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any 
rudiment of the organ which would enable us to 
pass by a process of reasoning from the one to the 
other. They appear together, but we do not know 
why." Spencer and Bain also coincide with this 
view. 

18 



208 



OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 



Prof. Fiske, in his work on The Destiny of Man, 
in the opening of the sixteenth chapter restates this 
his position with added emphasis. The thought is 
expressed with such cogency and clearness and is of 
snch prime importance that I will quote the entire 
passage. " It is not likely that we shall ever succeed 
in making the immortality of the soul a matter of 
scientific demonstration, for we lack the requisite 
data. It- must ever remain an affair of religion 
rather than of science. The only thing which cere- 
bral physiology tells us when studied with the aid of 
molecular physics is against the materialist as far as 
it goes. It tells us that during the present life, al- 
though thought and feeling are always manifested in 
connection with a peculiar form of matter, yet by no 
possibility can thought and feeling be in any sense 
the products of matter. Nothing could be more 
grossly unscientific than the famous remark of Caba- 
nis that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes 
bile. It is not even correct to say that thought goes 
on in the brain. What goes on in the brain is an 
amazingly complex series of molecular movements 
with which thought and f eeling are in some unknown 
way correlated, not as' effects or as causes, but as con- 
comitants. So much is clear, but cerebral physiology 
says nothing about another life. Indeed, why should 
it ? The last place in the world to which I should go 
for information about a state of things in which 
thought and feeling can exist in the absence of a 
cerebrum would be cerebral physiology. The mate- 
rialistic assumption that there is no such state of 
things, and that the life of the soul accordingly 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 



269 



ends with the life of the body, is, perhaps, the most 
colossal instance of baseless assumption that is known 
to the history of philosophy." 

I think there is abundant evidence in the phenom- 
ena of mental life below the human to show that 
animal instinct, whose sole mission it is to help in 
the maintenance of animal life, is an impulse im- 
planted in the organism itself to be followed blindly 
through the action of the automatic nerve-arcs. The 
knowledge it displays is unmistakably divine, the 
matchless thinking having been done when the organ- 
ism was at the first devised. But coupled with this 
purely animal instinct, supplementing its action and 
supplying its defects, there are certain low forms of 
will-power and consciousness, of memory, reasoning 
and imagination, although the entire purpose of the^e 
seems to be to conserve the body merely, there being 
no apparent promptings to progress, no unsatisfied 
longings, the whole mental horizon shutting down 
close about the now and the near. 

While there are thus at least indications even 
among the lower animals of the existence of three 
distinct forms of force, the bioplastic, the instinctive, 
and the semirational, one above the other, and all 
above the inorganic, having for their mission to build 
up and maintain the physical organism, and while 
they clearly do not result from nor constitute any 
part of that organism, but rather are its creators and 
preservers, although not shown to have an existence 
antecedent to, or apart from, the transparent bit of 
protoplasm in and through which the bioplastic groups 
work their wonders, yet we have no positive evidence 



270 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

that they survive their marvelous handiwork. In- 
deed, as its destruction seems to terminate their only 
known mission, and as they evince no purpose and 
betray no longing beyond, there is no reason in them- 
selves considered for thinking that they outlive it. 
Agassiz has, it is true, most suggestively remarked 
in his essay on Classification that " a future life in 
which man should be deprived of that great source 
of enjoyment and intellectual and moral improve- 
ment which result from the contemplation of the 
harmonies of an organized world would involve a 
lamentable loss," and has raised the question whether 
"we may not look to a spiritual concert of the com- 
bined worlds and all their inhabitants in presence of 
their Creator as the highest conception of paradise." 
We might reply that should such an environment be 
found essential to the highest happiness of glorified 
spirits, God would simply have to perpetuate the 
same orders of existences which he has already be- 
gun, the same procession of life, the same laws of 
birth and growth and decay, the same pantomimic 
battlings for mastery which now so call out all the 
infinite resources of instinctive promptings, that the 
same individuals need not return to earth again and 
again, playing the selfsame parts in an endless go- 
round which evidently would be their fate, no ele- 
ments of progress having ever yet been found in 
them, inasmuch as the same ends of human use 
would by simply continuing the present system be 
'equally well conserved. 

Thus we see, in following out the various lines of 
modern research, that science comes very near the 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 271 

positive proof of immortality which we so passion- 
ately long for, but the much-coveted prize ever lies 
just beyond its reach. Across its path there seems to 
appear from out the darkness the uplifted hand of a 
Divine Providence, and out of the silence to break 
the whispered words of warning, "■ Thus far, but no 
farther." 

Joseph Cook says that "the externality and in- 
dependence of the soul in relation to the body are 
known now under the microscope and scalpel better 
than ever before." In this remark there is an ap- 
parent lack of careful discrimination, for the body, as 
usually conceived of, is made up of unused nutrients, 
protoplasm and formed material. Of the relation 
between the soul and the transparent jellylike pro- 
toplasm, which constitutes, as I have heretofore re- 
marked, two thirds of this mass, the microscope and 
the scalpel have thus far proved powerless to offer 
any adequate explanation, and consequently we as yet 
have no positive knowledge as to whether the soul 
can survive its complete severance from all its present 
known linkings with matter. We have indeed been 
able to prove, as I have attempted to show, that it 
has a far wider liberty and range of action and a far 
greater mastery over matter and the under forces ; 
that it has a longer outreach of direct will-power, of 
personal impressment, of mysterious spiritual tele- 
phonic touch, than we had ever dreamed of ; that it 
has^ other and subtler sense-perceptions than those 
derived from the usual sense-organs, suggesting the 
possible possession of a second body too ethereal to 
be seen and, it may be, too ethereal to be destroyed by 



272 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

the cliemic forces that lie in wait to pluck down what 
the vital seek to build up and maintain; but, not- 
withstanding all this, we are obliged at the last to 
confess that we have no positive knowledge of the 
existence of the soul only as it continues to be in 
some way organically linked with tangible matter, to 
be a veritable prisoner, though its chain may stretch 
out over a continent or a sea, to be a prisoner still, 
though, like the soaring yet earth-bound eagle, it has 
an almost tireless power of pinion to speed toward 
the sun. 

But though science thus far has not been able to 
furnish us any positive knowledge of a life beyond, 
yet these same startling facts which I have enumerated 
of the soul's completer mastery over matter and force, 
its farther outreach of direct will-power, of telephonic 
touch, its subtler sense-perceptions, and its ampler and 
intenser thinking power securing unwonted vividness 
of mental vision — all intimating that we have entered 
only in part upon our contemplated inheritance of 
permanent supremacy — form a chain of indirect evi- 
dences well-nigh as strong as direct, demonstrative 
proof. They are most welcome prophetic voices 
whispering their cheer through the inmost chambers 
of the soul. 

Science has also by its discoveries so vastly exalted 
our conceptions of man's place in Nature, and so un- 
folded the plan of creation, so clearly traced the trend 
of God's thought through the almost illimitable periods 
of the past, that the same conclusion breaks in upon us 
again and again with overwhelming force as the very 
highest of moral probabilities that to man must have 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 273 

been intrusted the priceless gift of immortality. 
There is no other adequate explanation of the dis- 
coveries which science has made of God's vast crea- 
tive work. This method of propounding hypotheses 
to explain certain phenomena and adopting that one 
which best answers the conditions, which best explains 
the facts, is the true and universally accepted method 
of reaching conclusions in all departments of scientific 
research. It has led to brilliant discoveries. Out of 
it have come all the theories upon which scientists 
have agreed to rest their faith. Leverrier, the cele- 
brated French astronomer, reasoned that certain per- 
turbations among the stars could be explained only by 
supposing a planet of a given magnitude and position 
hidden away in the far depths, and so confident did 
he become that he finally announced that if observers 
would turn their telescopes as he directed they would 
find a new world, and sure enough there shone Nep- 
tune, a hitherto unseen satellite of the sun. Many 
important theories have no such ocular proofs, yet 
science rests its full faith upon them. The undula- 
tory theory of light, involving a belief in the preva- 
lence of a luminiferous ether which even the most 
powerful microscope fails to reveal and which seem- 
ingly possesses properties otherwise unknown to 
matter, has won credence because it, in like manner, 
offers the most reasonable solution of a certain group 
of phenomena. All working hypotheses thus origi- 
nate and thus finally take their places among the 
accepted conclusions of science. 

As I have in my discussion of Science and Christ 
endeavored to show that only on the supposition that 



274: OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

there is a life beyond can we adequately explain 
the life that now is, I will here but briefly allude to 
the line of argument I there follow. Along down the 
ages there has been unfolding one vast all-embracing 
plan of thought. The evolution has gone on century 
after century, steadily, irresistibly, ceaselessly, without 
hurry, without delay. Its beginning is so far back 
that we can not even conceive it by our utmost reach 
of imagination. The wealth of invention and volition 
expended upon it and involved in it is also to us es- 
sentially infinite. The progress has been from the 
simple to the complex, from an amorphic vapor bank 
to a peopled world. At the outset matter lay dead in 
space, without form or motion or force, an absolute, 
universal chaos of unindividualized atoms. Unseen 
forces, grouped by deeply contrived correlations, hav- 
ing from time to time entered in as the plan pro- 
gressed, there have ensued motion, order, organization, 
and, at last, multitudinous life. Science has shown 
beyond question that the creation of man was pur- 
posed by God to be the goal of all his creative thought 
on this planet. The entire physical world was fitted 
up for man's environment. The drift of the unfold- 
ing of this world-embracing scheme has been toward 
man as the grand consummation. No creative pur- 
pose, no voice of prophecy in Nature, but has found 
embodiment and expression in him. No created thing 
but has conduced to the comfort and culture of him. 
No working force but has been mastered and made 
serviceable to him. No grace of form, of color, or of 
fragrance, but has sent thrills of appreciative delight 
through him. He is the one cosmopolite, the sub- 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 275 

creator, microcosm, masterful spirit, without a rival in 
all this wide realm. But the fact of deepest signifi- 
cance is that all this environment of the human soul 
this plan of slow and steady growth from o-erms 
through struggle which took such countless centuries 
and such infinitude of contriving to perfect, evidently 
had for its ultimate purpose the schooling of the 
moral attributes of that soul. Present happiness has 
ever been held in rigid subordination, indeed has been 
ruthlessly sacrificed whenever the discipline deducible 
from bodily or mental pain, from poverty, bereave- 
ment, danger, or deeply felt loss, was needed to bring 
out the latent virtues of that soul. In the presence \ 
of these disclosures can we believe that death ends all, 
that human spirits upon whose birth and unfolding 
there have been expended such endless eons of time, 
such inconceivable riches of thought, would be suf- 
fered to drop out of their present self-conscious state 
of being just as they with most glorious possibilities 
had barely come into it, for the vast majority of our 
race die when at the very beginning of their develop- 
ment, the most mature having to the very last a deep 
sense of their incompleteness and an insatiable long- 
ing for a more perfect attainment and an inborn hope 
of another and a larger life beyond. Would a God 
who has shown such resources of power, such depth 
of love, have his final purpose perish right on the 
very threshold of its achievement ? 

Modern science, when it made this its notable dis- 
covery not only of a world-embracing but of a uni- 
verse-embracing law of evolution, established, as I 
conceive, beyond all reach of reasonable controversy, 



276 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

the fact of an after-life. We need but to analyze and 
logically arrange the truths wrapped up in this the 
grandest synthesis of science to realize what an im- 
movable rock science has unwittingly uncovered for 
us on which to build our hopes of immortality. When 
the world's savants demonstrated the fact of there 
being progressively incarnated through the long roll 
of the ages an orderly and predetermined plan of 
thought they at the same time and necessarily demon- 
strated the existence behind it all of an intelligent 
designing mind and a dominant executing will origi- 



nating and directing its vast unfolding; and they 
further demonstrated that there was some culminating 
purpose, some crowning consummation, designed 
finally to be realized as an embodiment of some cher- 
ished ideal ; and they even still further demonstrated 
that this ideal could be nothing less than a living spirit 
partaking of the divine nature and capable at the 
last of entering into the divine companionship. There 
is no question but that such a height of purpose and 
of power is within the reach of the creating God ; 
and that with the ushering in of such a spirit, a spirit 
of illimitable possibilities of intellectual and moral 
growth, the series of creative acts would be complete, 
the utmost limit of the divine purpose and power 
would be attained, and the infinite yearning of the 
divine heart satisfied. Has the human spirit evinced 
such possibilities ? Are there wrapped up in it 
germinal capacities for such companionship ? Have 
disciplinary and developing influences been set at 
work to bring into glorious fulfillment these indwell- 
ing prophecies of the soul ? Or is man to be sue- 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 277 

ceeded by some still higher intelligence destined to 
round out into full and final perfectness this vast 
cycle of God's creative plan ? There is every reason 
to believe that there are already other mighty com- 
panies of God's children peopling the planets that 
circle round our own or other suns, but have we any 
grounds for suspecting that they occupy or can occupy 
any higher plane of being than it is possible for us to 
reach, that they can come into any closer relation- 
ship with the divine heart ? or rather is it not our 
privilege to believe that we may, if we will, stand 
as peers, even among the archangelic hosts in the 
great ingathering, by and by, of the ' gifted and 
the good ? 

If there are now no created intelligences that 
radically outrank us, and if there can not possibly be 
any ; if with us, and such as us, God's creative work 
is made complete — then science in its discovery of a 
universe-embracing plan of evolution brought to light 
with it that far more precious fact of God's gift to 
man of immortality. We need but to get a clear 
conception of the nature of the elements that must 
necessarily enter into that living spirit which fulfills 
the divine ideal, and of the nature of the environment 
of developing forces necessarily set at work upon it, 
to see how it must contain within itself both the 
promise and the power of an endless life. This con- 
clusion we will find will impress itself upon us as 
absolutely axiomatic. In order for this spirit to have 
the stamp of divine completeness it must, in the first 
place, come into closest vital union with Nature and 
with all that Nature comprises, and through its knowl- 



278 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

edge of divine law and its obedience to it mnst master 
Nature's forces, every one, and make them serviceable 
to its sovereign will. Has not man been brought into 
just such vital union, and is he not fast entering 
upon such universal dominion ? He is pushing his 
way out into new fields, making new discoveries, 
acquiring new powers every day, thus broadening 
the boundaries of his kingdom continually, yet with 
all his wonderful conquests he has not yet been able 
to say, " I have power to lay down my lif e and I have 
power to take it again." He has indeed made most 
marked advancement in his knowledge and treatment 
of diseases. He has increased his power to direct for 
a season and utilize the various organizing forces of 
vegetable and animal vitality and to prolong their 
active indwelling in the frail bodies which they have 
built, but, despite his utmost endeavors, he finds him- 
self utterly powerless to prevent their going out at 
the last and abandoning forever all that they have so 
marvelously wrought, to be ruthlessly torn down by 
hordes of disintegrating forces into dull dust again. 
Of one, and only one, out of all of earth's countless 
multitudes has it ever been said that he claimed such 
sovereignty. It is recorded of him that he not merely 
claimed it but made good his claim, and that after his 
resurrection he showed to his disciples how that 
simply through a more perfect vitalization the body 
once sown in weakness should be raised in power, 
sown a natural body should be raised a spiritual body, 
never to feel pain or to taste death any more. 
Whether he ever made such claim or ever made that 
claim good we need not now inquire, but if man is 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 279 

the crown of creation, and if Christ was man per- 
fected, lie certainly ought to have had such sover- 
eignty or there would be heights of privilege and of 
power still beyond his reach. He needed to taste 
death in order that the disciplinary and developing 
processes in him might be completed and God's full 
thought realized. The same sovereignty he possessed 
he ought also to vouchsafe his disciples, that even- 
tually in him all would be made alive, that when they, 
through his transforming influence, had become, like 
him, complete in glad obedience and in loving pur- 
pose, had been tested and developed on every side 
and in every way proved worthy, they would enter 
with him into the full possession of their inheritance 
of universal sovereignty under God. 

If we find that man has indeed been so royally 
endowed in every other respect that he has in him 
such transcendent intellectual and moral possibilities 
that he needs but to have continued existence, a fit- 
ting environment, and a love-born purpose to prove 
himself to be that veritable divine ideal which scien- 
tists assure us is the long-purposed culmination of all 
these mighty evolutionary movements with which this 
whole vast universe is still astir, we can not but con- 
clude that most ample opportunity for the possible 
intellectual and spiritual unfolding has already been 
provided for in the loving decrees of God, and that 
what we call death is only the soul's transition into 
another and doubtless a more fitting environment of 
developing agencies in the long process of character- 
building through which it necessarily must pass be- 
fore that large masterful liberty born of sovereign 



2S0 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

love is realized, before the full glory of that long- 
awaited divine likeness is finally attained. This is a 
necessary logical sequence, for whether man is to he 
the last of the created series or not, God can not 
avoid affording to some one the same ample oppor- 
tunity for character-building if he accomplishes his 
ultimate purpose, and therefore we have no conceiv- 
able reason for thinking that he would suffer man 
to be ruthlessly brushed aside after a few brief years 
of troubled life to make room for another provided 
we can find in him convincing evidences of the ex- 
istence of veritable living germs of divine likeness. 
That living spirit of which we have spoken which is 
to be the full and final embodiment of G-od's ideal 
must not only be in vital union with Nature, and be 
at last master of it, but also endowed with such in- 
tellectual capacities, such powers of insight, such 
insatiable thirst for knowledge, such taste and mental 
bent, that it will enter appreciatively and with keenest 
zest into the very thought-life of God as it finds it 
incorporated in this restless, ever-changing universe 
of worlds. Are not these unquestionably the gifts of 
man ? His inventions in the arts abound in ingenious 
appliances precisely analogous to those found out 
afterward to be inwrought into the bodily equip- 
ments of earth's insect-guided creatures, his multi- 
form industries and implements having their counter- 
parts in the diversified labors of insects and brutes, 
in their tool-terminating limbs and faces, his differ- 
ently organized communities, his monarchical and 
democratic forms of government, his disciplined 
armies, his weapons and fortifications, being matched 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 281 

by like social organizations and like contrivances 
among these same voiceless multitudes. 

These striking resemblances are not the results of 
any conscious or unconscious imitation by man or the 
following out of any suggestive hints he may have dis- 
covered in Nature, but it was after he had responded 
to the promptings of his own innate individuality, 
had pursued independent lines of thought, that he 
discovered what a remarkable likeness his ideas bore 
to those expressed in both animate and inanimate 
Nature. He has also proved himself competent to 
enter more comprehensively every year into this 
divine thought-life, pushing his way through into the 
profoundest penetralia with his chemical analyses, 
his microscopes and telescopes and spectroscopes and 
odoroscopes, his tasimeters and microphones, and all 
those ingeniously contrived search-lights of modern 
science, and he has been enabled to prove the ac- 
curacy of his insight by comparing his order of 
classifications with the order of historical develop- 
ment discovered long afterward in turning the leaves 
of the rock records of earth's deeply buried past. 
Kepler, the distinguished astronomer, as one of his 
grand discoveries flashed upon him, knelt in profound 
thanksgiving and heartfelt awe at the realization 
that he had been actually rethinking the thoughts of 
God. Man, also, has been able to catch the concep- 
tions of the Creator, even when only partially ex- 
pressed, and carry out plans which God had just be- 
gun, acting as an intelligent subcreator, multiplying 
and improving the varieties of vegetable and animal 
life, adding new riches of use and new graces of 



282 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

form and of fragrance as God apparently had pur- 
posed at the first. 

And man is not content with his present achieve- 
ments, but is adding conquest to conquest with in- 
creasing knowledge and ever-multiplying resources of 
power. There is a tireless and a dauntless energy 
carrying him onward, an enthusiasm of investigation 
that leads him to endure every manner of privation 
and fatigue, to undergo every exposure to danger, to 
sacrifice every lower interest of life, so intent is he in 
his longing to enter into this divine thought-life of 
the universe. 

In the third place, this living spirit, in order to be 
the very climax of creative purpose, must be gifted 
with moral discernment, absolute freedom of choice, 
and capacity for self -forgetting love, and must re- 
alize, and prove worthy of, the fearful responsi- 
bilities that inevitably accompany such bestowal, a 
bestowal that virtually intrusts to the far-reaching 
sovereignty of its will the very arbitrament of its 
own moral destiny. This is the loftiest pinnacle of 
privilege or of power to which in the very nature of 
the case any created intelligence can ever be raised. 
This is the richest gift that ever can be bestowed, for 
it is the gift in embryo of the very attributes of God 
himself. Have we reason for believing that man is 
such a living spirit ? that in moral endowment and in 
possibility of moral attainment he has been so exalted 
in the scale of being ? The Scriptures have indeed 
declared that God made man in his own likeness, 
but is this borne out by the conception of man's 
higher nature arrived at through scientific inves- 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 283 

ligations of the facts of individual and national his- 
tory ? After a most exhaustive critical research there 
is now no longer any dispute among scholars as to the 
fact of a historic Christ, neither is there as to the 
sweetness and light of an utterly self -forgetting love 
that pervades every word and purpose of his life. 
Nineteen centuries have searched him through and 
through, and no fault has ever been found in him. 
Renan, that most brilliant French skeptic, who for 
years made his life and sayings a most thoughtful 
study from his standpoint, has penned this remark- 
ably frank confession : " The highest consciousness 
of God that ever existed in the breast of humanity 
was that of Jesus." 

Christ has enriched and ennobled the thought 
of every age since his advent, and among the most 
civilized peoples of to-day he is still in the very fore- 
front in all ethical and religious thought. By the 
power of his personal sympathy he has through that 
most marvelous law of spiritual assimilation so trans- 
formed men into friends and followers, so won their 
confidence and kindled in them such a flame of en- 
thusiastic devotion, that they have gladly sacrificed 
every comfort, every prospect of personal preferment, 
endured every extreme of hunger, thirst, and fatigue, 
forsaken home and country, submitted to tortures 
and imprisonments, braved the most threatening 
dangers, faced death itself with songs and thanks- 
givings, have proved in every conceivable way with 
what stanch loyalty men will follow a loved leader, 
what unfolding and uplifting power love has over 
the human heart, what capacity for love the heart 
19 



284 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

has ; how grandly possible it is for love to so permeate 
it with its transfiguring light, to so enlarge its powers, 
exalt its impulses and passionate longings, as to dis- 
close unmistakably the lineaments of its divine like- 
ness and prophesy of its ultimate fitness for divine 
companionship. The Scriptures assert for Christ that 
he brought life and immortality to light, and it is 
generally thought that this was done solely through 
his direct declarations and his own rising from the 
dead. This, of course, is proof sufficient for the 
Christian believer, but to the scientist and philos- 
opher, who regard Christ simply as a man, these evi- 
dences are wholly inconclusive ; but even they may 
find in the life of Christ, in its spotless purity, in its 
unbroken series of victories over all promptings to 
selfishness, in Christ's catholicity of love, his revela- 
tion of the infinite passion of the human heart for 
friendly sympathy, its infinite capacity to be uplifted 
by it through the law of spiritual assimilation, in 
Christ's recognition of this nascent divinity in every 
man and in his own manifest power to quicken it 
into growing life ; in short, in his declaration and 
demonstration of the possibility of the human soul to 
develop into ever stronger likeness and enter into 
ever closer union with the great Oversoul that gave 
it birth — in these and other distinguishing character- 
istics of his life the scientist and the philosopher may 
find, as I most profoundly believe, comforting and 
convincing proofs of man's immortality. There is no 
other solution of Christ's grand and simple life of 
love and trust from either a scientific or a philosophic 
standpoint. JSTo nobler, more majestic being can 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 285 

be imagined ; none with a larger freedom of choice, 
a deeper moral discernment, a firmer adhesion to prin- 
ciple, a more self -forgetting intensity of love. Even 
if he were mere man, still we can say, with all dne 
reverence, that in his creation God exhausted his 
infinite resources, for he evidently gifted him with 
the very germs of infinity, in the possibilities of 
spiritual perfection and of divine likeness, and in 
order to disclose that likeness and to call out that 
matchless love, to unfold that flawless character, he 
had to make life a perpetual battle-test, a prolonged 
sacrifice ; he had to provide an environment of weak- 
nesses and cares, of dangers and disappointments, of 
difficulties and trials without number. He had also 
to awaken longings and kindle hopes of immortality 
through certain constitutional, ineradicable intuitions 
of the soul. These are God's pledges, his authorized 
voices of prophecy. Has he made pledges, think 
you, which he can not or will not fulfill ? Has he 
permitted voices of prophecy to echo through the 
soul which he has designed should mislead in order 
that he might develop in man a nobleness, a loving 
trust, a moral stability, a grandeur of purpose greater 
than his own ? Has he lowered his own moral stand- 
ard to lift up man's ? What could be his possible 
motive to thus commit moral suicide ? Or rather, 
how could such a purpose ever enter the divine 
mind ? This is absolutely unthinkable, yet without 
some such divinely inspired hope there could not 
come into the soul any divine life. Christ contin- 
ually held out such hope knowing full well he could 
not disciple men without it. Would God with im- 



286 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

perturb able coolness suffer the self -renouncing Christ 
to be thus deceived, and thus also to deceive millions 
of others age after age and thereby induce them to 
jeopardize every earthly interest for the reward, after 
suffering and sacrifice and struggle had done their 
terrible work, of blank annihilation ? Would he 
awaken in his children this the noblest of all long- 
ings, one no earthly friendship can satisfy, to be 
brought into sympathetic intimacy with himself that 
they may feel the uplift of his personal presence, 
would he encourage them to cherish this the ten- 
derest, holiest sentiment of the soul and at the same 
time be harboring that most appalling purpose to 
banish them forever out of being ? Would God so 
deprive himself of all a father's joy in feeling the re- 
sponsive heart-beats of grateful and confiding chil- 
dren ? Would he thus consent to lose all the charms 
of social intercourse forever ? Is this the God which 
scientific research has found enthroned behind phe- 
nomena ? Such a one must be either heartless or 
helpless. To believe that death is the end-all of the 
universe would be to believe the universe a worse 
than failure, a bodying forth of rank injustice and 
deceit, that there is no glorious " far-off divine event 
toward which the whole creation moves," no vast 
world-process out of which there is to issue some 
day the fullest liberty through the fullest love, no 
survival of living spirits fitted and destined for 
divine companionship, no God wanting love or 
worthy of it, but some mystery-shrouded being to 
be left at the last in that loneliest of isolations, a 
self-imposed exile from all of love's relationships, 



SCIENCE AXD THE LIFE BEYOXD. 



287 



dwelling forever after amid the wreck of matter 
and the crush of worlds. 

Into such a horror of darkness does irrefragable 
logic plunge our thought when once we deny man's 
immortality; but the moment we grant it, what a 
blessed light, what a wondrous harmony breaks along 
the world ! How clear it becomes why deep down in 
the restless human heart there exists that intense long- 
ing for permanency, that desire running through all its 
joy in the healthful changes which life brings that 
the life itself shall endure, that the work of life and 
the record of it shall remain, that its own power shall 
continue to be recognized and felt ! why it searches 
so diligently, while embodying its concepts, for those 
materials, for that device of workmanship, and those 
combinations of form best suited to withstand the 
stress of disintegrating forces ! why it aims not only 
to* win but to hold the pleasure-yielding prizes of life, 
to mold circumstance, command destiny, and defy 
change ! why the statesman seeks to make some per- 
manent impress on his country's polity, the scholar to 
leave behind some imperishable monument of his 
learning, the scientist to link his name indissolubly 
with some notable contribution to human knowledge 
the philosopher to found some growing school of 
thought, the poet to set singing forever some love or 
longing ! why we seek so instinctively to paint our 
cherished ideals on the strongest canvas with the most 
permanent pigments, chisel them into granite and 
marble, mold and harden them into brass and iron ! 
why in every imaginable way, according to our voca- 
tion and taste and environment and personal power, 



288 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

we make it a lifelong study how to place that which 
we prize beyond all annihilating influences ! why the 
thought of ourselves or of our work passing away is 
so utterly repellent, the longing for perpetuity so 
deeply imbedded in the constitutional framework of 
our minds, being as universal as the race, becoming 
more pronounced as the world becomes more civilized, 
involving our noblest loves, our loftiest aspirations, 
our brightest expectancies ! 

How clearly we can see pervading the mighty on- 
goings of Divine Providence a purpose of divine love 
the very instant we regard this life as a preliminary 
training school for a life beyond, the present suffer- 
ings and struggles, the rending of tender home ties, 
the defeat of fond ambitions, the dashing from parched 
lips of lifted cups of pleasure, all as indispensable pre- 
requisites to character-building, to the securing and 
conserving of our higher and more permanent in- 
terests, as the only disciplinary and developing agen- 
cies that are at all adequate to prepare for that larger 
and grander life awaiting us by and by ! How cheerily 
the battle-scarred Paul speaks of this in his Corinthian 
letter, " For our light affliction, which is but for a 
moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory " ! 

What masterful portraitures we meet with here 
and there in Tennyson's In Memoriam of the doubts 
that distract us because of the turbulence and swift 
vicissitudes that mark human history and the restful 
assurances that come afterward, like blessed benedic- 
tions, as our faith takes hold on the promises of im- 
mortality that are sounding in our souls : 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 289 

" Are God and Nature then at strife 
That Nature lends such evil dreams f 
So careful of the type she seems, 
So careless of the single life. 

" So careful of the type ? but no, 

From scarped cliff and quarried stone 
She cries, a thousand types are gone ; 
I care for nothing ; all shall go. 

" ! life as futile, then, as frail I 

! for thy voice to soothe and bless ! 
What hope of answer or redress ? 
Behind the veil, behind the veil. 



" Thine are these orbs of light and shade ; 
Thou mad est Life in man and brute, 
Thou madest Death ; and lo ! Thy foot 
Is on the skull which thou hast made. 

" Thou wilt not leave us in the dust, 

Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
He thinks he was not made to die, 
And thou hast made him ; Thou art just. 



" That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
That not a life shall be destroyed 
Or cast as rubbish to the void 
When God has made the pile complete. 
• 

" That each, who seems a separate whole, 
Should move his rounds, and fusing all 
The skirts of self again, should fall, 
Remerging in the general soul, 

" Is faith as vague as all unsweet. 
Eternal form shall still divide 
The eternal soul from all beside." 



290 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

With this clew in our hands man no longer appears 
bunglingly made or the earth ill suited to him, or his 
constitutional instincts and intuitions raising, through 
some fell purpose, false and hurtful expectations, or 
the Creator with deliberate heartlessness breaking 
with him his most solemn word. With this clew we 
can reconcile with the supposed beneficence, wisdom, 
and power of Clod the fact that the tenderest ties of 
love and friendship have been made possible and been 
encouraged within an environment of ever-threaten- 
ing dangers and of certain death ; we can understand 
why man's affectionate nature has been filled with 
yearnings that this world's companionships utterly 
fail to satisfy, with outlooks that this world's experi- 
ences have never yet realized. 

"With this clew we can satisfactorily account for 
the world's consensus of opinion in favor of immor- 
tality, that opinion being the more pronounced the 
more masterful and exalted the mental and spiritual 
gifts ; we can interpret the predominance of hoj)e, 
the insatiable desire for life and creeping horror at 
thought of annihilation, the indefinable expectancy 
reaching out beyond the confines of time, that deep 
unrest, that intensest longing, that consciousness of 
yet but partially developed intellectual capacities and 
of spiritual imperfections with which all the nobler 
souls are filled, the fact of the imagination's power to 
indefinitely widen the horizon of the actual and the 
present, the loosing of man from the thraldom of 
blind instinct and the placing upon him the fearful 
responsibilities of sovereign will, the power of stand- 
ing with unquailing heart face to face with death, the 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 291 

sublime willingness to sacrifice for principle all the 
privileges of life, its brightest prospects, even life itself. 
With this clew we can with calm confidence and 
enlightened faith assure ourselves that " this universe," 
as another has said, " is not an infinite contrivance for 
the production and swift extinction of sentient, lov- 
ing, intelligent life ; it is not a stupendous vestibule 
to a charnel-house, where affection, friendship, science, 
and art find congenial and progressive recipients for 
a few fleeting moments, and man is admitted to a 
glimpse of a possible happiness and growth and then 
plunged into blackness of annihilation ; a world where 
life and mind are given only to be withdrawn, as if 
in mockery, and truth and goodness are as evanescent 
as falsehood and evil." "With this clew we are no 
longer the victims of that terrible nightmare of doom 
under which many of the ablest physicists of our age 
seem fast bound as by an evil spell, " of giant worlds 
concentrating out of nebulous vapor, developing with 
prodigious waste of energy into theaters of all that is 
grand and sacred in spiritual endeavor, clashing and 
exploding again into dead vapor balls, only to renew 
the same toilsome process without end — a senseless 
bubble play of Titan forces, with life, love, and aspira- 
tion brought forth only to be extinguished " ; for with 
this clew we can see afar down the coming ages a 
glorious culmination of that vast plan of evolution 
which science has discovered reaching out to the 
uttermost bounds of the universe and back through 
the remotest periods of the past, awing us by the 
majestic sweep of its divine thought and the infinite 
depths of its divine love. 



292 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

It has been profoundly said that " immortality is 
the great prophecy of reason." Open-eyed science, 
if it stands by its uniform practice hitherto, must also 
accept of this hypothesis of a life beyond, as it, and it 
alone, furnishes adequate explanation of the phe- 
nomena of the life that now is. 

Upon this presentation of the intimations and 
strong probabilities, amounting to almost positive 
proofs, of the fact of immortality as derived from 
scientific investigations and discoveries thus far made 
we must for the present be content to rest our case. 



III. 

Thus far we have seen that science, while furnish- 
ing no positive knowledge of immortality, has cer- 
tainly so established and emphasized the reasonable- 
ness of it as to confirm onr hopes and transform them 
into feelings of blessed assurance. It also has helped 
us to wider and clearer conceptions of what that life 
will be. 

It has revealed the universal prevalence of a law 
of evolution from the simple to the complex; a law 
of order, of gradation of forces, reaching from the 
atomic to the vital, from the first faintly spiritual to 
the divine ; a law of harmony involving the final and 
absolute mastery of every force over all below it and 
absolute submission of every force to all above. It 
has established that this harmony is the proposed goal 
of creation, and that any force that persistently im- 
pedes this progress or breaks this harmony will ulti- 
mately and utterly destroy itself. Science by its in- 
vestigations also leads us to believe that matter and 
force are indissolubly joined, that we have no warrant 
for believing that our souls will ever exist without a 
body. No such divorcement is anywhere known. 
Though atomic forces have never been dislodged 

293 



294 OLD FAITHS AXD NEW FACTS. 

from their original hiding places, other physical forces 
have ; but while changed in form they have never been 
destroyed or shorn of the least scintilla of their 
primal power, so scientists claim, a law having been 
discovered to prevail not only of correlation bnt of 
conservation so complete that they can be made to 
pass through a wide circuit of change and again to 
reappear in their first forms and first potency. The 
vital forces, however, not only can be dislodged from 
the bodies which they have organized and for a time 
reigned over, but dislodged beyond all reach of our 
recall. If they continue to exist — and, judging from 
the law of persistence prevailing among other forces, 
we have analogical reason to think they do — they must 
beo-in anew the work of vitalization unless a second 

o 

body is already organized inside the first, for if souls 
survive we have no reason to doubt but that their 
gift of organization will survive with them, and that 
they, the instant they leave one body, will, if necessary, 
begin building another. But they, perhaps, will not 
be forced to use such gross material again or else will 
uplift and transform that material by a more perfect 
vitalization. It will not, however, seriously surprise 
us if it transpires that inside the present visible body 
another subtiler one already exists, made, it may be, 
out of some such invisible, incomprehensible form of 
matter as the all-pervasive luminiferous ether, so 
seemingly undisintegrating and so ethereal as to be 
able to interpenetrate all other substances, even the 
most compact. As you are doubtless aware, the un- 
dulatory theory of light — a theory as well established 
as that of gravitation itself — presupposes the existence 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOXD. 295 

of an intermolecular and interstellar ether, which is 
not only all -pervasive and invisible, but possessing 
properties seemingly contradictory to those of or- 
dinary matter. John Herscliel estimates that its 
pressure per square inch must be seventeen billion 
pounds. Prof. Jevons says that we may regard it as in- 
finitely solid adamant, and this view seems necessitated, 
for by means of its marvelous elasticity wave-motion 
is propagated through it at the inconceivable rate of 
one hundred and ninety-two miles per second, yet, 
to our utter astonishment and confusion of thought, 
the most ponderous worlds whirl about in it with seem- 
ingly so much ease that it is difficult for us to per- 
suade ourselves that they are not whirling in a vacuum. 
We know of nothing to hinder tins ether becoming 
organized and rendered serviceable as a subtile second 
enswathment of the soul. Such execution of a double 
purpose, instead of being unknown to Nature, is indeed 
so common that we have failed to catch its full signifi- 
cance. This is constantly taking place in vegetable 
and insect life. The germinal force inside the apple 
seed makes no disclosure for years of its ulterior de- 
sign. It works steadily through many growing sea- 
sons, fashioning bole and branch and leaf as if no 
other commission were given to it. The architectural 
skill displayed as it arranges so accurately the ele- 
mental atoms which it picks out of the soil, the air 
and the raindrop along those lines of symmetry which 
accord with some predetermined pattern, excites our 
wonder, and well it may. But what think you would 
be our astonishment if for the first time, while yet 
wholly unprepared by any prior experience or by any 



296 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

intimation from any one, we should witness the whole 
tree bursting into bloom and afterward throughout 
its branches bending with rounding and ripening 
fruit ? 

The marvelous transformation of the crawling 
worm into a winged insect equipped with a new set 
of instinctive impulses suited to the new mode of life 
into which it is suddenly summoned is a similar car- 
rying out in animal life of a double commission. 
How these two purposes are kept distinct, what de- 
termines the time of transition, and how the change 
is wrought, are impenetrable mysteries. The early 
Christians in their adopting the butterfly as the em- 
blem of their faith in immortality clearly indicate 
their belief that through some such mysterious change 
as that going on inside the hard, coarse coat of the 
chrysalis a psychical body is being built for us with- 
in the physical by the same commissioned organizing 
force. 

To suppose that after death the human spirit for 
any length of time, however brief, is to be in a dis- 
embodied state is contrary to all the teachings of 
science as to the history of force. Such a state is not 
only beyond our experience, it is beyond even our 
conception. The very existence of any force is re- 
vealed to us solely through its effects on matter, 
through its intimate linkings with it, and it is through 
this very channel that the existence of even matter 
itself is made known, for divorce from it the forces 
that are lodged in it and you will strip it of all its 
characteristics, of everything that serves to reveal its 
existence to our senses. As we know absolutely 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 297 

nothing of the nature of the substratum of matter, 
we know not what would be left, or whether any- 
thing would be, were all force taken away, and so, on 
the other hand, it is absolutely impossible for us to 
conceive not only how force could operate without 
matter, but how it could even exist without it. There 
is no law whose universal prevalence has been more 
thoroughly established by scientists, and whose im- 
portance is more uniformly conceded, than the law of 
, contiguity. When, then, through scientific research 
we reach the conclusion that the soul is immortal, we 
find ourselves strongly impelled to the further con- 
clusion that each soul has two bodies, both organized 
and similarly equipped with sense-perception, one 
within the other and invisible to it, though none the 
less a real material entity, and that this second in- 
strument becomes the principal one when the first is 
worn out and cast aside. Out of what kind of matter 
it is made we can not tell, it being too etherealized to 
come within the reach of our microscopes or of our 
chemical tests. That it really exists is not only thus 
logically established, but very strongly suggested by 
those strange psychical phenomena to which we have 
already directed attention. It is quite possible that 
the difference between the two bodies consists not in 
the material used, but in the degree of vitalization 
that has taken place, in the control secured by the 
organizing force. Why need we go further for a 
solution of the mystery ? "Whether this second body 
will be the only other one the spirit will ever weave 
about itself, whether this will prove sufficient for all 
its after-needs, there are no means of determining ; but 



208 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

of this we can rest assured : that for the purposes of 
further intellectual and moral development the spirit 
will somewhere, in some way, be still furnished with 
the needed bodily and world -environment of disci- 
plinary suffering and struggle until the great work 
of evolution already carried on through the vast eons 
of the past becomes complete. 

The invisible second body to which I have re- 
ferred may survive, as perhaps it has preceded, this 
entire series of changes, and finally be the only en- 
swathment of the soul. Of this we can feel assured : 
that the final, permanent body will be free from all 
those imperfections and limitations which were de- 
signed for, and are suited solely to, the work of char- 
acter-building. It only remains for us to determine 
what these imperfections and limitations actually are 
in order to judge what the characteristics of the final 
body will be after these have served their purpose 
during the preliminary periods of moral development. 
There is one way, and only one, in which science can 
be of service to us in our attempts to unravel the 
deep mysteries of the life beyond, and that is by 
definitely determining the main trend of the divine 
purpose by what has already been accomplished. 
God has unquestionably carried out in Nature enough 
of his plans for us to intelligently trace their principal 
outlines and predict their result if we will carefully 
study the drift of the centuries as scientific inves- 
tigations disclose it to us. A sufficient segment of 
the circle has been given us to find its center and 
complete its periphery. It is now the settled be- 
lief of the whole thinking world that in the changes 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 299 

thus far effected there is observable a far-reaching 
plan of evolution — a patient, persistent, orderly ad- 
vance from chaos to cosmos, from the simple to the 
complex, from inorganic to organic, from first faint 
glimmerings of vegetable and animal vitality to the 
highest forms of self-conscious and morally respon- 
sible spirit-life. 

The contention of to-day is not as to the fact of 
an orderly evolution, but as to the interpretation of 
that fact ; one school of thought holding that differ- 
ences in kind are but the gradual accumulations of 
differences in degree, primal matter possessing the 
promise and the potency of all life to be finally un- 
folded through some inherent impulse working in 
accordance -with inexorable law; the other school 
maintaining, and I think with better show of reason, 
that for the forwarding of the grand purpose neces- 
sarily new forces have from time to time been 
introduced from without by some watchful and effi- 
cient intelligence. We are safe in assuming, as I have 
already attempted to show, that composite man with 
his pronounced personality is unquestionably the 
ultimate goal of God's endeavor ; that with the per- 
fecting of this, the embodiment of his long-cherished 
ideal, his purpose will be complete. And now we 
may further safely and confidently assume that God 
will finally reach the full realization of his creative 
thought by continuing to follow along those very 
lines of evolution that have characterized his work 
thus far — that of both an uncurtaining and an unfet- 
tering of this very same supremely gifted spirit upon 
which he has left the imprint of his image and to 
20 



300 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

which he has offered the priceless privilege of his 
own companionship forever. I ask your attention, 
then, while I point out with some degree of partic- 
ularity these two phases of evolution as brought to 
light by the science of physics and of metaphysics, 
and of personal and national history, for here and 
here alone, as I have said, does science afford us any 
sure words of prophecy as to what physically, intel- 
lectually, and morally we are destined to become if 
we lovingly consent to the perfecting in us of the 
divine purpose. 

First as to the uncurtaining : 

There may be noticed everywhere in Nature a 
carefully contrived and a most consummately executed 
plan of concealment. Our spirits are housed in bodies 
furnished with five instruments of research, marvel- 
ously constructed, it is true, and of marvelous power, 
but nevertheless of quite pronounced hmitations. 
With our sense of sight we fail to discover even in 
our clearest northern skies aught else than minute 
spangles of light, and only after centuries of scientific 
training we learn to regard these specks as ponderous 
worlds whirling through the measureless depths of 
space. To the great mass of mankind only here and 
there one of the thousand nebulae with their innu- 
merable systems of suns and satellites is in the least 
visible, and it appears but as a thin fleecy fleck of cloud 
on the face of the heavens. Even the Milky Way, of 
which we form part, is to our unaided vision but a 
dim, diffused haze of inextricably interwoven threads 
of light. Our own moon, comparatively so near, 
seems but a smooth silver disk, and its edge, though 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 301 

actually _serrated by mountain peaks, but a line of un- 
interrupted curve. 

~Not only is creation thus bidden from us by im- 
measurable distance, but also by an infinite minute- 
ness. A drop of vinegar we now know is a wide lake 
peopled and disported in by hundreds of organized 
living creatures. This thronging multitude of sentient 
life is as absolutely curtained from our perception as 
it would be were the drop this moment plunging 
down some precipice on the planet Mars. 

A hiding is also effected by extreme tenuity. A 
drop of water may be converted into viewless steam, 
or chemically torn asunder into two invisible, impon- 
derable, and odorless gases. 

There is still another method, to us seemingly past 
finding out, in which matter has been removed from 
our field of vision. The existence of that luminif erous 
ether to which I have referred as accepted by science 
illustrates this, a fluid filling not only all interstellar 
spaces, but so completely permeating all substances 
that it absolutely incases every separate molecule 
composing even the most compact. 

The vast majority of material phenomena equally 
elude the detection of our other organs of sense. We 
can but concede that there are numberless sights and 
sounds and odors and flavors absolutely beyond our 
detection if we study the pantomime of the lower 
animal life going on about us. These organs, by which 
alone we can lift any of the curtains of concealment, 
not only have thus very restricted capacities, but are 
soon fatigued, are easily deranged, distorting all they 
tell ; sometimes are, one or more of them, taken away 



302 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

altogether through accident or disease. Moreover, the 
bodies themselves in which these organs are set are 
so cumbersome that they are with the greatest diffi- 
cult y and with most provoking slowness transported 
from place to place by the eager spirits which they 
seemingly so inadequately serve. 

Why were we shut up in bodies thus so limited with 
but live little dusty windows through which to catch 
at the best very imperfect and unsatisfactory glimpses 
of the world outside ? Surely the purpose was not to 
hide it from us permanently, for we have been gifted 
not only with an insatiable curiosity, but also with in- 
exhaustible material and mental resources for drawing 
aside the countless curtains. We have pierced the 
stellar spaces with our telescopes and disentangled the 
light of nebulae; with our spectroscopes we have 
solved the riddle of the sun ; and so successfully have 
we supplemented our senses that even the regions of 
the infinitesimal scientists have reached and ran- 
sacked with their cunningly devised instruments of 
search. 

!Not only are many of the phenomena of matter 
thus hidden, but absolutely all of the forces which 
produce them, the wonder workers persistently keep- 
ing their faces closely veiled. The same holds true 
in reference to all those vegetable and animal forces 
which with most consummate constructive skill en- 
wrap themselves in organisms faultless in symmetry 
and in the adaptiveness of their various parts to the 
demands of their respective environments. That 
giant redwood of California is the spacious palace 
home of some viewless fairy which through the 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 303 

lengthened lapse of centuries with tireless industry 
has incorporated, cell by cell, its grand ideal from the 
crude material it has gathered from the earth and air 
about it. Its strong pulses beat to the very tips of the 
many million leaves that glance in the sunlight, yet, 
strange to say, it once found within the microscopic 
walls of a single germ ample room for a home and a 
hiding place. The spirit that looks out from the 
flashing eyes and that inspires the lightning leap of 
the fierce tiger was once imprisoned in an egg too 
small to be seen without most powerful lenses, and 
too fragile to withstand any but the gentlest touch of 
human fingers. These vital forces in their essential 
nature are still to us profoundest mysteries. Even to 
become acquainted with the conditions under which 
they are commissioned to work their wonders has de- 
manded from us a most patient and critical study, and 
still even here our eager hands have succeeded in only 
partially drawing aside the hiding curtain. 

Instinct, as to its working methods and real es- 
sence, also presents problems that have perplexed the 
most painstaking and thoroughly equipped investiga- 
tors of all ages, and have received at best but partial 
solution. Our own nature, origin, and destiny — mat- 
ters to us of such transcendent moment — remain to 
this day, after centuries of research, essentially sealed 
secrets. And He who has so carefully contrived and 
consummately executed this plan of concealment has 
seen fit to hide even Himself, making darkness his 
throne and his pavilion the thick clouds of the sky. 

Why is this curtain thus drawn down about us 
everywhere ? Why is one corner of it so tantalizingly 



304 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

lifted ? Why are we endowed with such irrepressible 
curiosity to get full view of what we at the first are per- 
mitted but the faintest glimpse, or of whose existence 
we are informed only by some vague suggestion ? 
Why are there such multitudinous resources without 
and within us for unearthing these secrets hidden so 
carefully in the vast domain of matter and of mind ? 
Sufficient answers may be found in the fact that thus 
there are furnished us fields for thought, possibilities 
for virtue, occasions and capacities for joy. If we 
will carefully inquire into these God's modes and 
means of carrying out his vast scheme of evolution 
we will be wonderfully helped in our attempts to 
study into human destiny, into the nature of our 
future bodily endowments, of our mental activities, 
and of our spiritual and emotional life. 

First, this plan of concealment affords us wide 
fields for thought. Our minds in the beginning are 
total blanks, our guides' being simply a few instinc- 
tive impulses. The world into which we are intro- 
duced is to us, absolutely, terra incognita. With but 
germinal capacity, with faculties untrained, with no 
stock of experience or acquisition of knowledge, we 
enter upon our careers. Growth by means of a cease- 
less activity is the law of our life. Keen curiosity is 
the first intimation of our mental awakening, and this 
mind-thirst thus beginning with our birth never ceases 
so long as we are in a condition of health, but proves 
insatiable and of an ever-increasing intensity. Con- 
genital or acquired differences in taste or aptitude lead 
us into separate fields of exploration, to the rendering 
of different interpretations to the objects or operations 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 395 

in Nature about us. Companies of bold adventurers 
sail unknown seas, trace the configurations of strange 
continents, and follow rivers through their tortuous 
windings into dense forests, over wide prairie land, 
through canon and mountain gorge to their very 
fountain heads, fighting against wind and tide, endur- 
ing arctic cold and tropic heat, braving dangers from 
wild beasts and still wilder tribes of men, suffering 
the pangs of hunger, even willingly laying down 
their lives that they may lift from off the face of the 
planet the curtain of mystery. The flora and fauna 
of new-found continents then become to botanists and 
naturalists objects of profound study, while geologists, 
going below the surface, read in the fossil forms im- 
bedded in the folds of earth's mantle records of 
countless centuries of change. Chemists and biologists 
extend still further human inquiry into the laby- 
rinthian mazes of Nature's arcanum; psychologists 
and metaphysicians explore the realms of mind, while 
earnest theologians essay to enter the august presence 
even of the soul itself and of its creating God. 

Thus many sided Nature has been undergoing the 
sharp scrutiny of the many-eyed mind of man, and in 
the world's great libraries and museums are garnered 
the rich returns of this indefatigable research of the 
ages. Yet secrets are still locked up in creation and 
exploring parties are still pushing out in every direc- 
tion, keenly alert to discover something new. 

Will this mental activity ever cease ? Will there 
ever come a time when the last hiding curtain will 
have been lifted, the last secret solved, the last crav- 
ing of curiosity satisfied ? Will it be possible for man 



306 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

ever to explore all the mysteries of the universe and 
have no further food for thought ? To answer these 
questions in the affirmative we must assume that God's 
own thought-life and creative activity will cease, or 
that we will through persistent disobedience sink down 
into apathy and be finally cut off from any further 
intercourse with him. It is reasonable for us, then, to 
anticipate that the final bodies of those of us who 
through a loving obedience attain unto eternal life 
will differ from these present ones in being more 
serviceable to the mind, more completely under its con- 
trol, with none of their interpretative senses lessened 
either in number or power but rendered rather more 
acute and accurate. The changes effected in them 
will be such as not to retard mental activity, but, to 
quicken it. Present defects that can be overcome by 
our own invented appliances we should not, therefore, 
expect to have removed by God, since this would so 
far lessen the incentives to mental activitv and so far 
keep back that evolution which he has so carefully 
planned. 

They will, however, know no fatigue, feel no pain, 
meet with no disaster, be a slave to no devastating 
passion. Fire will not scorch them, water drown 
them, beast devour them, poison prey upon their 
tissues and sap their life, but mind will be their' abso- 
lute master. It has now only partial control ; vitali- 
zation is as yet incomplete. It will be simply by 
rendering this vitalization, this spirit-dominance over 
matter and all disintegrating forces, absolutely su- 
preme that these favorable changes will be wrought. 
We have no occasion for supposing that any change 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 307 

will occur in the nature of the different forces, but 
merely in the degree of sovereignty which the human 
spirit will have over all those that are below it, brought 
about through the perfecting of its loving obedience 
to all above. This is the already declared order of 
divine harmony, as we shall show farther on. We are, 
in other words, to become more thoroughly alive, more 
masterful, and this increased sovereignty will unques- 
tionably be given so soon as God finds it safe and 
desirable, so soon as our moral schooling through 
pain and weakness and danger and grief is ended, 
and we have developed fully in virtue, for a time will 
come when there will be no more moral growth, no 
further need for discipline, when those of us who have 
continued lovingly obedient will have attained unto 
the stature of the perfect Christ, though mental ac- 
tivity and growth will go on and on forever. 

In the picture presented to us in the gospels of 
Jesus during his forty days' sojourn following his 
death we have depicted the power over the body 
which every soul may expect as soon as the last vic- 
tory over evil has been won. We will not now stop 
to discuss whether that account is historically true, 
although it is in such admirable keeping with all that 
has gone before and presents such a faultless finish to 
a life so divine, that I, for one, can not but place confi- 
dence in its verity. It at least furnishes a most apt 
illustration of what the permanent body will be if the 
present plan of evolution is carried out, and surely we 
have a right to expect it will, when the spirit has 
entered upon its final and full dominion over it. It 
is said that flesh and blood can not inherit the kingdom 



308 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

of heaven ; true, for flesh and blood as understood by 
us are but partially vitalized matter, liable to deterio- 
ration and disintegration, a heavy clog on the spirit. 
Over the body of the risen Christ neither disease nor 
death had any more power. ISTo hostile force could 
mar it. It could be transported at will, even lifted 
up beyond the clouds, gravity being completely over- 
borne by the sovereign spirit within. About it could 
be thrown a mantle of ^visibility. It could be at 
once so etherealized as to be passed through closed 
doors, so condensed into tangible material as to par- . 
take of honey and fish, and to so present the print of 
the nails and of the spear-thrust to the doubting 
Thomas as to persuade him again to believe. The 
appearance of its face and the very tones of its voice 
could be so changed as to escape the recognition of 
those who had known and loved Christ best. It could 
be transfigured with the ineffable glory of an angel 
and tread again the crested waves of Lake Gennesaret 
on an errand of love. ISTo behest of the spirit could 
it fail to obey, for it was no longer flesh and blood, 
no longer matter having an unstable equilibrium, the 
sport of contending forces, but matter mastered, 
glorified, redeemed. ~Not only will a body thus be- 
come the permanent and perfected instrument of the 
mind, having organs of sense-perception, and that 
greatest of all organs, the organ of thought, and per- 
forming all the functions which the mind's eternal 
activities will require, thus keeping it in touch with 
the material universe that environs it and reveals to 
it through its incarnations God's own thought-life 
through the ages ; but the mind itself will have its 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 309 

vision cleared from pride and preconceived opinions, 
prejudices and passions, and all those distracting and 
distorting influences that becloud it while the moral 
battle is raging, and with a tireless brain and inex- 
haustible nerve-power to do its bidding, it will un- 
questionably make mighty strides in its quests for 
truth. To suppose, as most of us have been taught 
to do, that we will in some mysterious way grasp by 
intuitive insight all knowledge instantly, and not be 
- compelled to go through long processes of reasoning 
and make protracted inquiry by patient, persistent ex- 
periment, as is our present experience, is unquestion- 
ably fallacious, as we can readily see, for were this 
the case there could be no continuous history of 
mental evolution, as that involves gradual accretions 
of knowledge and an ever-increasing grasp of thought. 
It would be contrary to the whole mode of God's 
working hitherto. What we have warrant in looking 
for is a steady growth, a perpetual unfolding from 
century to century, from age to age. "We possess in 
part, and occasionally exercise even now, intuitional 
power ; but this is designed to supplement, not sup- 
plant, the deliberate self-conscious ratiocination that is 
the leading characteristic of our present thought-life. 
"We have every reason to believe that, in strict accord- 
ance with this plan of evolution that has marked God's 
course thus far through the centuries, as science 
teaches, there will still be carried on, not only on this 
side the grave, but beyond it, all the varied activities 
of the universe. Man will acquire continually deeper 
insight into the divine thought and enter into closer 
touch with the life of the divine love. 



310 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

The " knowledge " which the Bible affirms " shall 
vanish away" is only that supposed knowledge of 
which blind men boast, that is so mixed with mis- 
chievous error. This surely will vanish away and 
juster conception eventually prevail, but death will 
not instantly transform us from intellectual babes into 
athletes, from untutored savages into deeply versed 
angels of light. That would not be evolution, but 
creation. As in virtue, so in knowledge we must 
" mount to the summit round by roumd." The in- 
sight and mental training we here acquire will not be 
lost, but will mightily avail in our further search for 
truth. We have no assurance that we will ever see 
the essence of things, that we will ever be permitted 
to look into the unveiled face of a force, will ever be 
permitted to lift the hiding curtain of matter from 
before any living spirit. What I conceive that proph- 
ecy to mean — "For now we see through a glass 
darkly ; but then face to face : now I know in part ; 
but then shall I know even as also I am known " — I 
can best explain after having pointed out how by 
means of this same carefully executed plan of conceal- 
ment the supreme work of character-bidlding is at 
last accomplished. To a consideration of this the 
second purpose and achievement we will now turn. 

There is not a single moral trait that is hot the 
outgrowth of a struggle with temptation, a victory 
over it. "When Adam came from the hand of his 
Creator he was simply innocent. He had not a par- 
ticle of moral character, good or bad. God — and we 
say it reverently — had no power to endow him with 
any. Could he by his creative fiat have placed him 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 3H 

and his posterity on the earth full panoplied at the 
very outset in all those noble attributes that have so 
sweetened human life and crowned human history 
with unfading glory, and could he have made it im- 
possible for any of them ever to have fallen from this 
eminence, would he not surely have done it ? Would 
he not have avoided if he could those terrible battle 
scenes that have marked not only every age and 
country, but every hamlet, every home, every human 
heart ? All he had the power to do was to create the 
conditions out of which character might be developed ; 
that is, to establish codes of law or to reveal codes 
already established ; to endow us with moral percep- 
tions and grant us absolute freedom of choice. Simply 
the possibilities of virtue, not virtue itself, lay within 
the range of his creative energy. It is only out of the 
exercise of free choice in the presence of temptation 
that our virtues ever have or ever can come. low 
the question arises, "Would not the drawing aside of 
the curtains of concealment, whose folds fall about 
us everywhere, remove all those temptations without 
which traits of character can never be evolved ? 

In that striking allegory of paradisiacal life given 
in Genesis, in which is vividly pictured the fall of 
our first parents, we find an affirmative answer. The 
devil dealt in subterfuge. The serpent, because of 
his universal repute for low cunning that courts con- 
cealment, is selected to carry on the fabled colloquy, 
and stands ever after throughout the sacred writings. 
until at last in Kevelation he is represented as hurled 
chained into the bottomless pit, as the most fitting 
symbol of the satanic influence at work in the world. 



312 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

Suppose all hearts had been unveiled then and there ; 
suppose Adam and Eve could have unraveled at once 
and completely the subtle sophistry suggested by their 
own appetites, passions, and propensities, and by the 
shrewd insinuations of the evil one ; that they with 
unerring vision could have seen the final, fearful con- 
sequences of their disobedience; suppose the devil 
had been conscious that the baseness of his motives, 
the hollowness of his professions of friendship, the 
hurtful falsehoods in his assertions, were all laid bare ; 
and, lastly, suppose that God's personal presence and 
full knowledge of what was going on, his utter abhor- 
rence of sin and boundless sympathy and solicitude 
for these new occupants of his universe, had been 
fully revealed, think you the scene here described, or 
any similar one, could ever have occurred ? The mo- 
ment you unmask the devil you unnerve him. He 
can fight only under cover. Place the serpent at full 
length on bare ground, know that his only purpose is 
to stab with a poisoned dagger, have him ever at the 
front, be able to measure the length of his spring be- 
fore he makes it, be cognizant of his murderous 
thought before he can carry it into execution, and he 
would be as harmless as any beast of the field. Let 
him know that he is ever shadowed by a sleepless eye, 
and, if he has a tithe of the shrewdness he is credited 
with, he would never spend his energies in a spring. 

If we study carefully the scenes and dialogues of 
that wonderful drama the Book of Job, the oldest and 
profoundest poem known to literature, we will see 
how constantly in the plot was employed the element 
of mystery, how absolutely essential it was for the de- 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 313 

veloping in the hero of that singular patience which 
some unknown Shakespeare of the Orient, prompted 
by a divine impulse, has here so masterfully portrayed. 
The devil is represented, you remember, as thrusting 
himself with cool effrontery into the presence of 
Jehovah while a company of angels was holdino- 
audience, as having spoken very sneeringly of the far- 
famed piety of Job, and as having been allowed the 
free use of all the destructive and tormenting forces 
- in Nature for subjecting it to the severest tests his 
fertile fancy could devise. Eobber bands, thunder- 
bolts, and cyclones strip Job of his possessions, death 
desolates his fireside, painful disease makes his burn- 
ing body a burden, three black demons masked as 
consoling friends pour the poison of malign interpre- 
tation into his wounded sensibilities and basely at- 
tempt to befog his reason ; to crown all, she who had 
shared his heart's riches and life's hopes, and in the 
happy years had borne to him the children whose 
freshly dug graves were still wet with his tears, she, 
the cherished wife of his bosom, had in his darkest 
hour turned tempter, calling on him to curse God 
and die. 

Had every hiding curtain been torn from before 
the actors in this drama ; had Job, his wife, his three 
professed friends, the sneering, mischief -loving imp, 
all seen eye to eye, all known each other's most secret 
thoughts ; had Job been able to estimate this world's 
blessings at their true worth, to penetrate without re- 
serve the secret purposes of Providence, to have con- 
tinued in uninterrupted interchange of thought and 
sympathy with the now speechless dead; had the 



314 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

horizon of his conceptions and certain knowledge 
swept through, all the buried past and to the furthest 
future — his patience would never have been thus tried, 
and without some such temptation he could never 
have attained that eminence of virtue for which he is 
now so justly famed. 

In the narration of Christ's temptation we have 
pictured one of the great crises in his history. The 
incident is unquestionably cast in poetic mold, and for 
the drapery of the thought there has again been 
selected the favorite form of allegory. The underly- 
ing, essential truth can be readily discerned. The 
struggle was, as I regard it, an inner, mental one, 
which uniformly and necessarily arises in a young 
man's experiences as soon as he discovers himself the 
possessor of any valuable personal gifts. He is called 
to decide whether he shall use his endowments self- 
ishly to appease appetite, promote pride, or procure 
power, or, rising superior to personal considerations, in 
a spirit of self-sacrifice, employ them in the work of 
a world's reclaim. Christ here must have been ap- 
proached on the side of his human limitations ; other- 
wise he was not, as is affirmed, tempted in all points 
as we are, and could never claim at our hands any 
meed of praise. He must have had the same imper- 
fect mental vision, the same lack of experience, 'blind- 
ing propensities, short-sighted pride, and worldly am- 
bition, together with the same moral discernment and 
freedom of will — yes, and the same sustaining grace 
vouchsafed every disciple. He stood apart only in 
this — that he maintained from the first an unswerving 
loyalty to his convictions of truth and duty. 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 315 

It was. surely a shrinking, sensitive human soul 
groping in the dark which wrestled in prayer through 
that last long night in Gethsemane. That was no 
mock petition, « Father, if it be possible let this cup 
pass from me ; nevertheless not my will but thine be 
done." 

# This scene presupposes two separate wills— one 
without compulsion submissive to the other; two 
separate intelligences— one in its range of vision, its 
depth of insight, superior to the other. If Christ had 
positively known there was no other way, if all 
curtains had been drawn from before his eyes, he 
would not again and again have groaned out 'this 
prayer with an agony so great as to cause beads of 
bloody sweat to redden his brow. He must have re- 
ceived in answer assurances from a higher source than 
his own unaided intellect to have achieved that con- 
quering calm that so marked his conduct ever after— 
at the arrest, during the trial, amid desertions by 
inends, under taunts by the rabble, and at last through 
the humiliation and torture of his execution. 

I question whether it was explained to Christ's 
human soul during those hours of passionate plead- 
ing precisely why human redemption could not be 
achieved except through his crucifixion, but am per- 
suaded that his after-calm came by his having been 
assured by God that he had again through his earnest 
solicitation carefully reconsidered the whole question 
and could not devise any other way, and then by 
Christ s resting with absolute trust in the wisdom 
and tender love of the Father, he having brought 
nimselt to say without reserve, " Thy will be done." 



316 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

Thus assured and thus resigned, he rose from his 
knees a victor. 

How oppressive and profound must have been 
the lifelong loneliness of Christ! For how many 
years he endured the monotony, fatigue, privation, 
and obscurity of an ordinary artisan in a little quiet 
country town ! Neighbors passed him in the street, 
bartered with him in the bazaar, hired him at his 
trade, talked over with him the ordinary news and 
passing interests of the neighborhood — even his 
brothers met him daily in the more intimate rela- 
tionships of the home circle — and never once the 
faintest suspicion crossed the mind of any one of 
them that there was here something more than a 
plain, plodding artisan; that there were ripening 
here mental gifts and an impregnable moral purpose 
that were destined to place their possessor in the 
forefront of all the ages. 

Christ must have frequently felt the restlessness 
of genius ; there must have crossed his thought fre- 
quent foreshadowings of his strange destiny. It is 
not disclosed in the record precisely when his human 
soul entered into that mystic union with Divinity 
which is plainly recognizable in the utterances and 
acts of his public ministry. For aught we know, he 
may during those long formative years have awak- 
ened into a divine consciousness. 

Whether this divine nature, and the conscious- 
ness of it by the human, came then or later, we may 
rightly admire and wonder at his power of self-re- 
pression ; for, whichever was true, his human will 
must always have been as free as ours. The closely 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. g 17 

folded spirit-wings never once rent apart the coarse 
coat of the carpenter; the ineffable spirit-glory never 
snff used the weather-beaten face of this nnpretendni 
young man at Nazareth. He plodded on" week if 
and week out, year in and year out, nntil a day came 
a whose close he shnt down for the last time fte hd 
of ks tool chest, and for the last time swung behind 
him his shop door. But though his private artisan 
career was thus forever endedfand during h nst 
three years wondering multitudes became" witnesse 
of his miracles of power, hung breathless on his 

miltv b rr 68 ° f *** ^ tMled *> ^ 
mighty heart beat of his matchless love, yet the 

wor d comprehended him not. He never was without 
the discipline of being maligned by his enemies, even 
of being misunderstood by his nearest friends. He 
without doubt could have made a self-revelation so 
nnmistakable that even Pharisees and scribes would 
have been struck dumb and misinterpretation been 
forever at an end. Now and then, on special occa- 
sions for a brief moment, one comer of the hidino- 
cnrtain was lifted. The money changers who fled so 
precipitately from the court of the temple, the 
Koman soldiers who came with Judas to take Christ 
must have caught a glimpse in the Master's counte-' 
wi!li , * m ? 6terio ™ something that filled them 
with blank (hsmay. His disciples thought they saw a 
spirit when during that night of tempest he walked 
toward them on the foam-capped waves of Lake 
Gennesaret and issued to the warring elements his 
mandate of peace. Peter, James, and John were 
Mled with wondering and worshiping awe when on 



318 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

the mount lie stood one rapt moment in the glory of 
his transfiguration. But he knew well that such 
revelations must be extremely rare or the purposes of 
his mission could never be accomplished. Christ, 
while he was God manifested in the flesh, was also 
God concealed. Both the manifestation and the con- 
cealment were but partial, and necessarily so. Had 
Christ dwelt among men with his divinity completely 
unmasked, slavish fear would at once have dominated 
every heart. As well shut up a man's body in a 
vacuum and expect it to thrive as thrust his soul into 
the immediate unveiled presence of its God. In- 
fringe upon its freedom, and it becomes a character- 
less machine. Expose its delicate petals of moral 
attribute to the full noonday glare of a Divine pres- 
ence, and they at once would shrivel into remediless 
death under the fierce furnace heat. God has acted 
seemingly in constant recognition of this truth in his 
dealings with the human race through all the centu- 
ries. His revelation in providence and in the in- 
spired Word has been very far from complete, he 
increasing the light only so fast as we could bear it 
and still be free. 

In Christ's experiences we find our own reflected. 
Similar opportunities for self -repression and self- 
assertion are afforded us by this wide-reaching plan 
of concealment, and it rests with us to determine 
what the result shall be. We have come into the 
world charged each with a divine commission, and if 
we be earnest and true we too will be straitened 
until it be accomplished. God has woven for us in 
those marvelous looms of his, whose noiseless shuttles 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 31 g 

never rest, curtains of every conceivable variety of 
pattern and texture and closeness of thread To 
succeed in drawing these aside, to reveal to others 
our inner selves, for which God has with far-reach- 
ing purpose implanted in every one of us an insatia- 
ble longing, will demand a resolute mastery of many 
a difficulty which has by himself or through his suf- 
ferance been thrust in our way. The careers of 
those who have left the impress of their individuality 
on the activities and achievements of their age in the 
department of thought or action are full of striking 
illustrations of this truth. Bodily defects have been 
overcome ; stammering tongues made eloquent ; weak 
voices strong ; indistinct articulation clear ; sensitive 
nerves unflinching and feeble muscles, firm and 
hard as bands of steel. Mental diffusiveness and 
inattention have been changed into protracted con- 
centration, a treacherous memory into a retentive and 
ready one, deficient observation into alertness, and 
sluggish sensibilities kindled into intensest fervor 
The mysteries and difficulties in Nature, as well as 
the more formidable hindrances of sickness and pov- 
erty, prejudice and jealous hate and cruel accusation 
have been mastered by many a heroic soul; consti- 
tutional dread of intruding and .of meeting rebuff 
overcome; dangers, open and covert, braved; the 
alienation of misconceiving friends borne with a pa- 
tient sorrow; death itself faced in quivering agony 
of nerve and heart-break on crosses of shame in a 
passionate longing for utterance and final recognition 
Firmness and courage and faith and all-conquering 
love are thus demanded and developed. Earth has 



320 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

no grander sight than that of some nobly aspiring 
soul waiting with sweet Christian resignation and con- 
fiding hope some far-off age, and, if need be, some 
other world for kindred souls to see it as it is. 

Through lack of self-knowledge and of world- 
knowledge we are often led to aspire in this life for 
what we can never attain. But our unselfish aspira- 
tions are the patent of our nobility, evidences of di- 
vine sonship. They outlast the grave, and I doubt 
not will find embodiment and uncurtaining in the 
promised by and by. Our duty now and here is to 
labor and to wait. 

Not only are others in great part hidden from us 
and we from them, but we soon discover how little we 
know even of our own selves. In our hours of intro- 
spective thought we seem to be wandering through 
the vast galleries of some spiritual Mammoth Cave 
deeply sunk from the sun's glare and the deafening 
din of the thronged avenues of this world's fife. On 
and on with dimly lighted torches we cautiously feel our 
way, gallery opening into gallery in seemingly endless 
succession. In our farthest, most daring explorations 
into the hidden recesses of our own personality we 
still hear the murmurings of far-away waters as they 
flow through their secret channels off into the un- 
known dark. We draw back in wonderment and 
heartfelt fear. It is in these solemn seasons of self - 
searching we are taught self -distrust and Divine de- 
pendence. It is in some one of these mental and 
moral awakenings we in holy childlike trust at last 
sink down into the Everlasting Arms. 

Thus in countless ways God curtains our spirits 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 32 1 

and delegates countless hands to hold the curtains 
down, while at the same time he implants within us 
countless impulses to draw them up. Out of the 
ceaseless struggle thus incited there is unfolded hu- 
man virtue, the bright consummate flower of human 
life. 

Of course until the soul has been fully perfected 
thus through suffering and struggle it will still be in- 
closed within these closely folded curtains of conceal- 
ment. The mere incident of physical death can not 
change those modes of moral evolution which during 
all the ages past till now have characterized God's 
plan. I fail to see not only any need for such change, 
but even any possibility of it, for the necessity as well 
as the conditions of moral growth must remain essen- 
tially the same. As long as any virtues of the germi- 
nal soul remain but partially developed and there is 
still manifested any impulse for growth toward the 
true and the good, there will unquestionably be pro- 
vided somewhere similar environment suited to its 
needs. God will never cease to strive with any soul 
until either through its own unyielding perverseness 
it finally destroys all its moral susceptibilities and 
through the immutable laws of spiritual development 
sinks down into sluggish brute existence or below it, 
or else through its own nobler longings of love' 
proved and purified in the fierce furnace fires of af- 
fliction, it is lit up at last with the revealing light of 
God's infinite love, transformed into his likeness and 
made sharer in his life. 

^ It is these two widely contrasted states of spiritu- 
ality that are properly denominated hell and heaven. 



322 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

It is into one or the other of them every soul inevi- 
tably develops through this great law of evolution 
under which science says the whole creation moves. 
And from before every soul as it advances toward 
one or the other of these two destinies all-hiding cur- 
tains will gradually be rolled away. Those who, 
through their perverse disobedience to the powers 
above them, will have become enslaved to those below 
and have gradually lost their sovereignty over self 
and the surroundings of self, will find, with a chill of 
utter horror, that the very weakening of their vitality 
has widened the rents in the curtains of their conceal- 
ment, as their bodies will bear the unmistakable im- 
print despite all they can do of their ever-deepening 
degradation. In vain then will they call on the rocks 
and the hills to cover them. It is on these very sin- 
distorted bodies of theirs God's recording angels will 
write their sentences of doom. Those, on the other 
hand, who attain unto a perfect liberty through obe- 
dience to God's perfect law will find, greatly to their 
surprise and delight, after the discipline of struggle is 
ended, that through their increase of sovereign vitality 
their bodies will cease to be any longer either prison 
houses or closely curtained apartments through which 
their souls can but dimly look out or the world look in. 
This more and more perfect revelation of the inner 
life which we thus see is inevitably to result in the 
carrying out of this great plan of evolution, will even- 
tuate at the last in a permanent separation of the two 
classes, for we all then shall see face to face, shall 
know even as we are known. We will find ourselves 
greatly assisted in our attempts to realize what marked 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 32 3 

changes will be wrought in these bodies when our 
spirits come into full vitalizing control over them if 
we keen in mind that all their present defects are 
simply due to a present lack of such control There 
is nothing more clearly taught in Nature than that 
there is m -every one of us a divine ideal, our personal 
peculiar gift, with germinal impulses for unfolding • 
that its present forbidding environment is designed to 
serve simply as means for moral discipline and growth • 
that whatever is suited simply for this probationary 
period wxll be eliminated when no longer serviceable ; 
that the body will be changed to suit its new uses 
that as at first it was designed chiefly to develop, but 
afterward, when probation is ended, simply to bring to 
light the mner life of the soul and promptly and per- 
fectly to do its bidding, a most glorious transfigura- 
tion, through purely increased vitalization may be 
looked for. Not only may we confidently expect to 
have removed all defects of contour or of expression 
by color or carriage, all distortion or grossness of fea- 
ture, all marring or maiming through disease, or acci- 
dent, or age, or care-burden, or racial or family ties or 
any former evil habit-any peculiarity, in short, that 
is not a part of the original divine ideal but rather an 
outcome of some untoward circumstance or the tem 
porary requirement of some exigency in God's school 
ot moral discipline-not only may we expect such de- 
fects to be removed, but we may also and with even 
brighter anticipation expect all the lineaments and 
expressions of face and form, all intonations of voice, 
all flitting shades of color, all outward gleamings from 
the eye, all words from the lips, to be soulful, soul- 



324 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

illumined, the very impersonation of spiritual spon- 
taneity. What glad surprises will greet us then! 
What glad deliverances ! What glorious revelations 
of emotion and motive! No more estrangements 
through misunderstandings ; no more heartburn ; no 
longer any lack of true appreciation, any timid reach- 
ing°out of homesick souls longing for love ; no more 
stammering, awkward, half utterances of thoughts 
that burn within like a consuming fire; no more 
forced unions or separations ; no more temptings to 
sinful self-seeking, for in the white light of this final 
revelation of soul to soul, in which the very first in- 
ceptions of sin would be uncovered to every eye, all 
incentives to sin would become impossible. Christ 
prophesied with prof oundest wisdom when he said : 
" They shall never perish, neither shall any pluck 
them out of my hand." There will be safety— abso- 
lute, eternal safety — when after the ordeal of fire from 
before all ransomed souls all curtains of concealment 
shall have been rolled away. 

But the query naturally arises, How will we be 
able to recognize again, after such a change, our old 
companions and loved ones on the earth ? How will 
the mother ever know again in that land of fight 
the babe which, through a few brief months of joy, 
she so tenderly pressed to her heart, and then, with 
streaming eyes, saw pass away as mysteriously as it 
came ? How will the lonely orphan ever know again 
the long-lost mother of blessed memory, whose locks 
were silvered and form bent in anxious loving care 
before God's messenger came and bid her lay her 
burden down ? These recognitions may take place 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 325 

through- this same superior vitalizing power which the 
soul^ at last shall have attained, being able, as was 
Christ after his resurrection, to make his body appear 
the exact facsimile of the old one, so that neither 
Thomas nor any of his other disciples might ever 
doubt, even in their darkest hours, that they had seen 
the risen Lord ; or this recognition may be effected 
through that same indefinable spiritual impressment 
which seems to be the inalienable birthright of every 
soul. We all have felt its mysterious influence many 
times in our lives. Some of us have noted how, after 
many years of separation, during which most radical 
changes have taken place through advancing age and 
new surroundings, after sorrow and care have wrought 
their terrible havoc, all at once, through something 
said or done, some look or tone, or something subtler 
still, the old feelings of intimacy are again rekindled, 
every barrier of strangeness vanishing instantly, as if 
touched by the wand of a master magician. 

By this wide-reaching plan of concealment there 
have been afforded not only fields for thought and 
possibilities for virtue, as I have attempted to show, 
but also occasions and capacities for joy. If we will 
carefully examine this the third and last use to which 
this plan has, by a divine wisdom, been made service- 
able, we will gain still deeper prophetic insight into 
the changes to be wrought, through the all-prevail- 
ing law of evolution, in human destinies in the 
life beyond. I ask you again to note how I restrict 
myself in the depicting of what will be to simply the 
logical outcome of those purposes of God already 
clearly disclosed and partially consummated through 



326 LD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

past centuries, predicating my predictions on the 
belief that he will continue to work along the 
selfsame lines which have thus far marked the ongo- 
ings of his providence, for surely we are safe in say- 
ing that he will complete what he has, age after age, 
with seemingly inexhaustible patience and painstaking, 
carried thus far forward. 

Mysteries are everywhere. There is not a mo- 
ment in life when we do not feel a touch upon the 
shoulder and hear whispered to us in the air, " Come 
and see." Mankind are all seekers, and " I have 
found it ! " is the ever-rising shout of the world's joy. 
Curiosity is the thirst of the mind. It is universal, 
deep-seated, commanding. So surcharged are we 
with it that a watchful and wise control is in constant 
requisition to prevent its tyrannizing over the fac- 
ulties. Means for its gratification are apparently in- 
exhaustible. Scientists, notwithstanding all their in- 
genious instruments of search, their indefatigable and 
trained industry, their carefully planned subdivision 
of labor, find, after busy centuries, that there are still 
outlying fields of unexplored thought and fountains 
of untasted pleasure. Neither telescopes nor micro- 
scopes have yet revealed to us any bounds to God's 
universe. We have discovered nebulas so sunk in 
space that their rays of light before they reached 
us, though flying twelve million miles a minute, were 
detained on the road thousands of years. The spec- 
troscope detects the presence of the one hundred and 
eighty millionth part of a grain of soda ; the micro- 
scope has disclosed " in a bit of brain tissue one might 
hold on the point of a needle wonderful grouping of 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 327 

cells and lines of communicating fibers which rival in 
their adaptations and perfectness the order and 
rhythm of the heavens." A cerebral cell must indeed 
be infinitesimal if in the gray matter of every brain 
there are, as distinguished mathematicians assure us, 
from one to three thousand million. 

Creation is also so many-sided that it attracts peo- 
ple of every taste and endowment and degree of culture. 
In its interpretation the dull and unlettered, as well 
as the world's mental magnates, find refreshment and 
solace and uplifting power. Differently constituted 
minds and the same minds in different moods ap- 
proach Nature with differently revealing capabilities, 
and derive from their search a different pleasure. 
God has lifted just enough of the curtain to pique 
our curiosity, placed just enough difficulties in the 
way of our getting full view to call out all our re- 
sources, and in so doing has provided for our being in 
the best possible mood to thrill with the revelation 
our faculties and feelings being all enkindled, our ap- 
preciative powers at the full, our whole nature on the 
lookout, roused as by a trumpet call. The anticipa- 
tion of discovery is the incentive ; the uncurtaining 
is the rich reward. There is joy in the shock of the 
surprise, the thing sought for bursting on the mind in 
sudden and dazzling splendor. The more keenly the 
appetite is whetted by long search, the more exquisite 
the joy at the uncurtaining. 

There will never be but little of this world's 
scenic wealth of beauty and of grandeur actually re- 
vealed to the bodily eyes of the vast majority of man- 
kind. There are only a favored few who have the 



328 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

leisure or means for extensive travel, and they are too 
apt to be those who, through fatal lack of natural or 
acquired gifts, can but grope in mental blindness 
along earth's ocean beaches, under its Italian skies, or 
among its Alps and Apennines, its Yosemites and 
Yellowstone Parks, and Colorado Canons. Yet Na- 
ture has not been left without worthy witnesses and 
interpreters ; her landscapes and sea scenes and sky 
glories have been transferred to the printed page or 
the painted canvas, and the human mind has been 
endowed with marvelous conceptual power — a power 
to picture to itself what has been described by another, 
so that our literatures and galleries of art become 
magic windows through which the whole world is 
brought into view, and not only the world of to-day, 
but of yesterday, yes, of yester-age. The past pa- 
geantries and peoples of earth brighten and breathe 
in our very presence. Thus, for our enjoyment, not 
only from all lands, but from all the centuries are the 
curtains lifted. 

And so, too, the wondrous sights that have been 
unveiled to scientists we make our own. We can see 
in our mental sky, through the object glass of Imagi- 
nation's great refractor, Saturn with her attendant 
moons, her luminous rings, and her rainbow-dyed 
mantle of woven light. We can see through Imagi- 
nation's microscope the perfect mechanical contriv- 
ances, the intricate yet nicely adjusted parts, the regal 
decorations of those marvelously minute atoms of 
animate matter so full of astounding evidences of a 
divine handiwork. 

We have even greater revealing power granted us, 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 329 

adding, still further to our refined and permanent 
pleasure. "We have visions of what ejes of flesh, 
however aided by artificial lenses, have never seen and 
never will. We can by this grand faculty of fancy, 
when furnished with the conclusions of comparative 
anatomy and cognate sciences, witness earth as it 
passes through its geologic eons of fire, and cosmic 
storm, and earthquake shock, and grinding glacier ; 
we can watch the rise and fall of the ancient dynasties 
of vegetable and animal life ; we can see the taming 
of Nature's elemental forces, the purifying of its at- 
mospheric currents, the establishing of its great out- 
lines of continent and river basin and mountain chain 
and ocean bed, the preparation of its soils, its quarries 
of rock, mines of metal and beds of coal, and the soft- 
ening and beautifying of its land and water scenery 
under the molding hand of Jehovah, that earth may 
at the last become man's fit dwelling place. 

"We are more privileged still From centuries yet 
to be the curtains have by inspired prophecy been 
partially drawn aside under the promptings of an in- 
finite kindness, in order that while on their way 
through this veil of tears " the young men may see 
visions and the old men may dream dreams." 

Noble as are the intellectual pleasures that thus 
come from the uncurtaining of Nature's phenomena 
and of her systems of law, profound as is the enthu- 
siasm of experimenters in science and all searchers 
after truth, nobler pleasures and profounder enthusi- 
asm animate those who enter Nature's vast arcanum, 
not simply inquiringly, but in a deeply reverent mood, 
who recognize in their discoveries revelations of a 



330 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

divine plan, ushering them with distinguished privi- 
lege into the felt presence of a personal God ; who 
regard phenomena as the crystallized thoughts of 
some great organizing mind, and study with ever-in- 
creasing interest the displays of a Creator's exhaust- 
less resources of invention, the manifestations of his 
power, and the unfolding through the ages of that 
grand ideal of his which in its final embodiment must 
bear the marks of his own infinitude and perfection. 

Even such exalted pleasures and enthusiasm as 
come through the opening of this mental commerce 
between earth and sky, between man and God, are 
still further enhanced so soon as men discern that 
these thoughts expressed in phenomena are not the 
idle play of a self -amusing intellect, but the outpour- 
ings of a beneficent heart. But the most satisfying 
pleasure and most exalted enthusiasm are reserved 
for those who, emboldened through the longings of 
their loneliness for closer, tenderer ties, draw aside 
with a humble, chastened confidence the veil whose 
folds fall before the Holy of Holies in the great 
temple of Nature and see above the mercy seat, not 
the broken outlines of a cloud made luminous by the 
awful presence of Jehovah, but the clear, speaking 
face and the outstretched welcoming arms of their 
own loving Father. 

Profoundly as we enjoy thus uncurtaining for our- 
selves what is without, we as profoundly enjoy un- 
curtaining to others what is within. In health we 
follow the promptings of deeply seated social instincts. 
Sympathy is our vital air. He who is an anchorite 
from choice gives evidence of serious mental lesion. 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 331 

A very -large share of our waking hours and busy 
thoughts are devoted to self -revelation. We take the 
greatest delight in discovering to others who we are 
our tastes, aptitudes, accomplishments, opinions, trials 
and triumphs, longings and cherished ideals. We 
have given to us many avenues of communication. 
Articulate speech, intonations of voice, postures, ges- 
tures and gait, blushing and blanched cheeks, sunny 
and flashing eyes, smiling and curled lips, open and 
knit brows these are some of the upliftings from our 
souls of their fleshly curtains. We also make our- 
selves known in our personal attire, style of our 
houses, grounds, and equipage, in our choice, of 
business or profession, in our methods of work 

tlullT Tr^ COm P™ 8lli P 8 - The pleasured 
thus derived brighten and bless every human life. 

seK reve,l Ug *" "" *" » ^ 6ndwed ^ 
self-reveahng power, and have found in its ex 

ercise such varied delight as is witnessed by the 
world s social gatherings, extensive libraries art 
galleries, and architecture, vocal and organ harmt 

trium D r a rr d omtorj ' *^<*«**jz 

triumphs, and mgemous utiKzations of matter and 
force through all its countless industries, ye \vith 
these many ways of lifting the curtain from the lul 
here has never yet lived a person, how fortunate o 
ever m opportunity or gift of utterance either te 
words or works, but has felt deep disappointment at 
the incompleteness of the revelation 

personafuZV' 7 f™ W s™ Mnd ™ to a 

IndZlT I I ^ met ^ in 0Ur foundings 
and m the imperfections of the flesh in which we are 



332 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

incased. How few are masters of their circumstances, 
are freed from the corroding drudgery, the dwarfing 
routine of the toil necessary to secure subsistence, of 
toil sadly unsuited either to tastes or aptitude ! How 
many gifted souls have been deprived of that peculiar 
concurrence of circumstances needed to call out and 
employ their peculiar powers ! Some geniuses, like 
Cromwell, or Grant, or Toussaint L'Ouverture, who 
was a slave till fifty, are seolian harps of such massive 
strings that they remain mute of music until swept 
by some tempest blast of war, while others are so 
delicately, ethereally built that they answer in mel- 
ody of rarest sweetness to the fairy touch of sum- 
mer zephyrs, but are shattered so soon as the wind 
be risen but a little. Upon how many rests also 
the incubus of disease or of a bewildering fancy! 
How many are hampered by loss or impairment of 
bodily organs and inborn defects of temperament, 
and by pernicious early training ! How many have 
their individuahty obscured by limitations of race, 
caste, climate, widely prevailing religious or social 
errors, or by the heavy iron hand of tyranny ! We 
pass through this life, and finally pass out of it nobly 
longing for recognition, yet profoundly conscious that 
not only from the general public but even from bosom 
friends much of our real selves is yet concealed, that 
our essential personality still lies in shadow. This 
marked incompleteness in this the crowning work of 
God's creation is in such contrast with the infinite 
perfection which the trained eyes of scientists, have 
found everywhere alike in the mineral, vegetable and 
animal kingdoms below us, that it stands in my mind 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 333 

as Nature's sure word of prophecy that there has been 
prepared for us another, larger life beyond. This 
wide plan of concealment is, as I have endeavored to 
show, most admirably fitted for a probation period, for 
the preliminary developing first years of our existence ; 
but if death ends all, then this plan is a terrible failure, 
a cruel mockery, a discord where we should look for 
an outburst of the grandest harmony. 

^ Not only does our sense of the eternal fitness of 
things thus suggest a life to come, but there are, as I 
have already suggested, strong intimations in Nature 
and Eevelation affording us glimpses of what that life 
will be. Prominent among its characteristics must be 
that of a grand uncurtaining. Here recur to us again 
the words of prophecy : « The city," that resplendent 
celestial city John saw in the far-away land of the 
soul, « had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to 

shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it The 

gates of it shall not be shut at aU by day, for there 
shall be no night there." Its inhabitants « shall see 
God's face, and his name shall be in their foreheads. 
. . . The Lord God giveth them light, and they shall 
reign for ever and ever." 

St. Paul says: "Now we see through a glass 
darkly; but then face to face : now I know in part ; 
but then shall I know even as also I am known." All 
that is gross and imperfect and perishable, all that is 
opaque, that lacks transmitting power, will be purged 
away. 

Once in a while, even in this world, a strange 
white light has been seen to shine out on the human 
countenance, a sort of saintly radiance. Joseph Cook 



334 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

in his lectures has called special attention to this. 
Some of ns have perhaps witnessed it. It probably 
betokens a signal victory in some great spiritual crisis. 
The glory of the soul seems to so fill the temple that 
it blazes out through its curtained windows. It may 
have been this that so lit the face of Moses when he 
came down the side of Sinai, and of Stephen as his 
life went out in that storm of blind frenzy, which, 
through Saul, had burst on the heads of the Christians, 
and of Christ himself as he walked on the sea or stood 
on the mount at midnight glistening with transfigur- 
ing light. The thought suggests itself again, as it did 
when we were considering another phase of this ques- 
tion, that even now a spiritual body lies concealed 
within the natural, and that this is what we see dur- 
ing these times of crisis. A like double commission 
seems, as remarked before, to be intrusted to all in- 
sect life. This change of bodies we call metamorpho- 
sis, and the departure extends not only to the struc- 
ture of the parts, but to the character of the instincts 
as well, and often to the nature of the habitat. A 
similar plan is noticeable even throughout the vege- 
table kingdom. One is especially struck with it as he 
watches the opening of the petals of a night-blooming 
cereus. For months and years a specimen of this 
species of cactus will pass a very ordinary monoto- 
nous existence until at some mysterious command, 
some talismanic touch, a minute bud will start out on 
the edge of one of its long, leathery leaves ; that bud 
will lengthen into a tendril, and on the end of that 
tendril will unfold during the hours of a single 
evening one of the most elaborately wrought floral 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 335 

products in all Nature. So with us, two germinal 
impulses, may, for aught we know, have been inclosed 
m one envelope. 

We have occasional intimations of havino- in re 
serve means of spiritual commerce which our & present 
surroundings prevent our using. There are manv 
authentic instances on record, a few of which I have 
given on preceding pages, of minds interchanging 
thought, though sitting in mute meditation, and some 
times, though divided by the breadth of a continent 
Over what wires these telegrams of souls are flashed 
none know ; that they are actually sent even cautious 
men of science now concede. Under certain condi- 
tions, mysterious as yet, the curtains of the flesh are 
lifted We also have had the long-forgotten past 
brought suddenly into view. Persons who have been 
at the point of drowning relate experiences of this 
sort, the multitudinous scenes of a lifetime starting 
up simultaneously out of their graves as at the trum- 
pet call of some angel of the resurrection. And then, 
too, what wonders have we seen wrought under the 
laws of suggestion ! We are in enchanted chambers 
where words falling carelessly from the lips touch 
springs to hidden doors, smiles playing about the face 
light up frescoed walls, and simplest sounds are echoed 
into touching harmonies. 

There is surely a great day coming when all hearts 
will stand revealed. To some it will be a day of shame 
and contempt, to others a day of glad deliverance of 
long-looked-for recognition. Are any of you under 
the shadow of a great sorrow ? Has the black curtain 
of death hidden from sight the face of a loved one » 



336 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

Are any worried and weighed down by heavy loads 
of care, by the friction of uncongenial toil ? Do any 
feel hampered by untoward circumstances? Is the 
white light of your souls dulled or discolored by its 
imperfect transmission through these thick walls of 
clay? Have any been wronged by misconception, 
isolated, walled out from the appreciative sympathy 
of those whose esteem you crave ? Wait. Wait with 
Christian confidence and constancy and content, with 
hearts kept warm with Christian love, with hands kept 
busy with Christian work ; wait that great glad day 
when from before each soul's inmost life of emotion 
and motive all hiding curtains will be rolled away. 

I have taken pains, as you have no doubt ob- 
served, to base my predictions as to the nature of the 
life beyond on the seemingly safe assumption that 
God in completing his ideal will continue to follow 
aloncr those two main lines of evolution which have 
thus far marked the ongoings of his providence — name- 
ly, the uncurtaining and the unfettering of all spirits 
which bear his image and will consent to come under 
the molding power of his love. These two phases of 
evolution, science — the science not only of physics but 
of metaphysics as well as of personal and national his- 
tory — has unmistakably brought to light, and in the 
facts and underlying laws and principles established 
by it it has afforded us not dim intimations merely, 
but clear and certain signs of prophecy as to what 
man in his threefold nature is destined to become. I 
have already attempted to point out what will be the 
final outcome of the processes of uncurtaining. I 
now ask you to consider the results of unfettering. 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 337 

This last purpose in providence is as definitely marked 
as the first, is as full of privilege, of promise, and of 
power. As these lines of evolution frequently and 
intimately interlace, it is sometimes difficult to keep 
them separate in our thoughts. As I have in Science 
and Christ attempted to show Christ's place in Na- 
ture and the indispensableness of his influence to the 
healthful growth of the soul, and dwelt with consider- 
able fullness on the true nature and source of liberty, 
I will content myself here with simply outlining what 
I there elaborated into argument and analysis. 

The only way to set Nature's forces free is, as we 
have seen, to fulfill certain fixed conditions, for they 
are all placed under inexorable laws from which they 
have neither power nor disposition to free themselves, 
and we have no power to free them. They work 
under divine commissions to divine ends. To free a 
force, then, is not to release it from law but from 
what prevents it from acting in strictest obedience to 
it The same holds true not alone in the inorganic 
kingdom, but in the organic, where life-forces master 
and mold those mysterious atoms we call matter. 
Chemical combinations, for instance, follow undeviat- 
ing mathematical formulae, and the germ-forces of 
both vegetable and animal life work their wonders 
only when provided with a precisely fitting and pre- 
determined environment. 

The promptings of instinct are also as methodic, 
as much under Divine control, as reflective of Divine 
thought, as peremptory in their demands for prompt 
and full obedience. To break away from them is not 
to come into larger liberty, but to tighten the chains 



338 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

and ultimately to destroy the life of the organism which 
they were designed at the first to build up and main- 
tain. 

We find, too, in mental activities as rigid regular- 
ity as that prevailing among chemic, crystalline, or 
vital forces, thoughts being generated as methodically 
under laws of association and suggestion as thunder- 
bolts are forged and hurled from the sky, salt atoms 
crystallized, or bodies of birds formed within the walls 
of eggs, our will power being effective only in hold- 
ing and directing the attention. Even the very high- 
est forms of force — the spiritual — manifested in affec- 
tions, aspirations, purposes, and far-reaching hopes, 
we find are at the first but germinal and he dormant 
until there is a compliance with certain fixed condi- 
tions, when their fetters fall and they begin under the 
laws of spiritual assimilation through the quickening 
influence of sunbeams of sympathy to grow into the 
permanent moral traits of the soul. 

There have also been established regular grada- 
tions of force throughout Nature's realms, rank rising 
above rank in a determinate series, and so we discover 
that a force if it would keep free after having once 
been set free must both obtain absolute mastery over 
all the forces below it and yield implicit obedience to 
all above. This is the universal law of Divine har- 
mony. Its infringement in the life of the body, the 
organizing vital force losing its grasp over the me- 
chanic and chemic, results in debilitating diseases, 
marred symmetries of form and graces of motion, 
maimings, dulled senses and sensibilities, and at last 
the full tyranny of death ; in the life of the intellect, 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 339 

the will failing to direct and hold the attention, in 
wayward fancies, disordered reasonings, idle, inco- 
herent day-dreaming, or relentless monomania; in 
the life of the soul, the angels of better impulse and 
aspiration succumbing to the devils of base and selfish 
desire, in all those countless spiritual disasters and 
despotisms which have so darkened human history 
and at times even threatened to ingulf utterly the 
very hopes of the human race. 

As the soul at birth is necessarily characterless, 
possessing simply innocency, and, through its gifts of 
freedom of choice and moral discernment, possessing 
a capacity for virtue, and as virtue can be the out- 
come only of growth through protracted struggle 
with temptation and victory over it, God, in order to 
develop in man his own moral image, was compelled 
to place him in an environment of disciplinary influ- 
ences, to house him in just such a body and in just 
such a world as we find, to bring him into such close 
and constant relation with the forces about him that 
he must become ultimately either their master or 
slave. The danger was imminent, but indispensable. 
Of course, until the work of character-building is 
finally finished, discipline will be needed, and this 
contest will continue. But when this work is done, 
the soul purified and perfected, there will ensue a 
complete change of environment. The spirit will 
doubtless still be linked with matter, will have a body, 
but a body so vitalized that it will no longer wall it 
in with prison dampness and shadow, but will be to it 
round about as a lordly pleasure-house, a palatial 
home, a body freed from weakness and all forms of 



340 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

disease, from distortions and impediments and present 
limitations of use, a body with multiplied powers, 
with enlarged outlook, having all grossness, all infe- 
licities, all vestiges of incompleteness, forever purged 
away. It will cease not only to curtain the soul, but 
to imprison it. 

There is no reason for believing that the human 
spirit will ever cease its intellectual activities or 
attain unto a completeness of knowledge or of thought 
power. Its mental horizon will doubtless ever widen 
as the years go by ; its comprehension of God's 
thought as it is embodied in his works and will fall 
from his lips will become ever deeper and more true. 
But he will be freed from the trammels of this but 
half -living flesh, from the trammels of indifference 
and inattention, of superstitious fear and prejudice 
and pride of opinion and selfish ambition that so 
handicap his every effort now. 

The question meets us here, When will this com- 
plete unfettering come ? I would answer, not until 
the spirit has, through the discipline of suffering and 
struggle, attained permanently the attitude of full con- 
secration and devout trust. Not until then will we, 
or can we, enter that far-away heaven of our longings 
and our hopes, where all care-burdens are lifted and 
sorrows cease, where, uncurtained and fetter-free, we 
forever after take loving counsel together and walk 
with God. Heaven is not simply a place into which 
souls are ushered straightway after death, but a far- 
off, final stage of spiritual evolution into which we 
may gradually grow, after a long and desperate strug- 
gle, if we will. God can gift us with moral discern- 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 341 

ment, crown us with sovereignty, provide schools of 
discipline, throw around us the arms of his infinite 
love, proffer us his sustaining grace, urge and aid us 
by his providences, his written Word, and the incom- 
parable life of his Son, but there necessarily end alike 
his responsibility and his power, for the evolution of 
character, the determining of ultimate spiritual des- 
tiny, can be the fruit only of the untrammeled choices 
of the soul. Heaven is simply that bliss of peace 
which Christ left as his last legacy of love, a peace 
battle-born and battle-tested, into the inheritance of 
which no spirit can enter until, after being fully tried, 
its last fetter falls, its permanent state besoming that 
of full consecration and devout truth. We little ap- 
preciate what marked changes we must still undergo 
to reach this spiritual development or realize that only 
thus we can secure that largest liberty under law 
which is the purposed consummation of that vast 
scheme of evolution inaugurated and thus far for- 
warded by Divine love as revealed first in Chris- 
tianity's Eecord, and now, with added emphasis, in 
the widest generalization yet reached in scientific 
thought. 

There has been, as I have already remarked, a con- 
stant progress through the centuries from the simple 
to the complex, from a uniform sameness of material 
atoms to a radical diversity of spiritual gifts. A self- 
conscious, absolutely distinct personality, possessed of 
both intellectual and moral discernment, is the very 
crown of God's creation. So evident is this the final 
end aimed at in this law of evolution, the most ad- 
vanced scientists and philosophers are coming to 



342 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

recognize the fact that to the forming of each sep- 
arate soul God has given his direct personal attention, 
that a distinct ideal of his is wrapped np in each 
spiritual germ, and that it is to the healthful unfold- 
ing of these very embryo possibilities of personality 
he has directed all the resources of an infinite love. 
For the securing of this unfolding there must be 
present eventually an environment of the very largest 
healthful liberty. The political and religious perse- 
cutions that have so darkened and disgraced human 
history show how sadly mistaken hitherto have been 
the world's conceptions of Divine purposes, and how 
utterly futile any attempt to stay the ongoings of this 
mighty tide of Divine progress. Mankind have at 
last, after unutterable sorrow, been led to see how 
true this is, so that to-day there is throughout 
Christendom a fuller, freer growth of individual- 
ity than ever before in both church and state, 
and liberty is now so far advanced that we need 
no longer have any fear that government, ecclesi- 
astical or political, " of the people, for the people, 
and by the people," will ever "perish from the 
earth." 

The belief is rapidly gaining ground that Divine 
inspiration in our individual lives should be looked 
for chiefly along the lines of our individual tastes and 
aptitudes, and that our special gifts are indices of our 
divine commissions, tokens of God's particular per- 
sonal attention to each one of us, revelations of his 
will, and prophecies of our to-morrow. We may for 
purposes of discipline be hemmed in by hindrances 
now, but they will pass, and we need simply to wait, 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 343 

not in -despondency or in idleness, but in consecra- 
tion and with a patient trust. We are having an 
ever-widening outlook. Eternity is now being ^pro- 
jected into clearer view, is clothed with greatercerti- 
tude, and we can live more completely in its lio-ht 
and nnder its power than ever before. We should 
look forward with unshaken confidence to ultimate 
and permanent victory, being content to abide God's 
time, and feeling assured God's time will come. 
Christ in his human nature had to let go every 
earthly prospect, taste in anticipation the bitterness 
of desertion, consent to surrender himself into the 
hands of murderous hate, and pass through the 
deepest valley of humiliation before attaining to that 
deep peace which he chose for his disciples in that 
hour of tender parting as the richest legacy of his 
love. Indeed, in no other way, in the very nature of 
the case, is this peace possible, for it comes, and can 
come only, from most perfect spiritual liberty, and 
this is always proportionate to the degree of conse- 
cration and of trust. Not until we can say in Love's 
full self -surrender, " Though he slay me, yet will I 
trust in him," are we free from the bondage of fear 
or care or discontent, of pride or envy, of passion or 
prejudice, of any of the thousand and one enslave- 
ments whose galling fetters it has so often felt. This 
state of the soul, instead of dampening its ardors or 
lessening its activities, will foster them continually ; 
its selfhood, being thus hallowed, not hampered, will 
ever act out healthily and heartily to noble ends and 
to assured success. Love as an incentive has never 
known an equal, and never will. The higher and 



344 OLD FAITHS AND NEW FACTS. 

purer it is the greater will be its impelling power. 
If now and then the soul's plans fail, it feels confi- 
dent that other and better ones will take their place, 
apparent present defeats being regarded as precursors 
of coming victories. Its plans formed while in this 
state broaden out into eternity. Its individuality en- 
ters upon a freer, sounder development, for it is now 
looked at as a part, and a very essential part, of the 
Divine guiding, and its cultivation a sacred duty. 
This complete unfettering, the second great end 
aimed at in evolution, is clearly within the reach of 
every human soul. Christ's life and legacy prove 
this. His life shows that it was certainly within his 
own reach. This all concede — infidel as well as be- 
liever. If he was simply a man, then a mere man 
has reached it. If God as well as man, then in the 
words of his bequest we have the promise of the 
power; for surely he would not in cruel mockery 
leave to his disciples in that most solemn hour, full 
of the tenderest farewells, as the last token of his 
love, that which he knew they had no capacity to 
incorporate into their own lives and character. But 
happily we are not shut up to a course of reasoning 
to convince ourselves of this, but may see its tran- 
scendent truth gloriously incarnated in those trans- 
figured lives which have so brightened and blessed 
the centuries since his advent. I might fill my 
pages with their recital, for there never has been 
an age in which God has been left without a wit- 
ness. 

Love — that which glorified the life of Christ, and 
to enkindle which was the one all-absorbing purpose 



SCIENCE AND THE LIFE BEYOND. 345 

of his mission— pure, perennial, perfecting love, in its 
casting out of fear, uncurtains the soul ; in its surren- 
der of self sets the soul free. Its universal reign is 
that " far-off divine event to which the whole crea- 
tion moves." It alone can open the gates of the 
New Jerusalem, can thrill the soul with the quicken- 
ing power of an endless life. 



THE END. 






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